Hesperidium
On a particularly stressful day leading up to the end of one of my final quarters at SCAD, I took a break to sit down on my couch and eat a snack. I was about to quickly rip into an orange as I had a lot of work to complete, but something caught my attention, and instead I stopped to examine it. The memory of my mom making potpourri over the winter holidays when I was a child popped in my head. She would stick cloves into an orange and it would dry that way throughout the season, never getting moldy or decomposing. It fascinated me, and I would pick it up and shake it to try to understand what was happening inside and how the orange became so hard over time. Sitting there on my couch, I started to wonder if the peel of an orange would be preserved in that way as well if it was peeled. And what if I peeled it to create two bowls, or vessels. As I peeled the orange slowly that day, being mindful of the form I wanted to create, I was suddenly relieved of the stress I was experiencing moments before because all I was thinking about was how I was carefully peeling that orange in my hand.
At the moment, I am completely present and focused on this easy and ordinary task. It became an aesthetic experience when I noticed the smell of the citrus, felt the texture, heard the sounds of separation, and saw the variation of color that composes the subject of my fascination in that moment. I was not thinking about what happened earlier in the day or what I still had left to accomplish. In those few brief moments I enjoyed being completely in the present, with such a simple yet beautiful object and task.
Peeling oranges became an enjoyable meditative process when my desire went from simply getting to the sweet fruit, to trying to preserve the two hemispheres of the peel into bowl, or vessel forms. I quickly discovered that the orange peels behave a lot like clay. I turn the peel off the fruit and it creates a memory in the rind. Even if I correct and coax its form to be symmetrical after pulling too hard in one area, as the peel dries, it slumps and shifts back into the shape where my fingertips pressed the hardest, much like clay has a memory of these moments that come back when fired in the kiln. It shows the experience of the past physically as it dries, much like our bodies do.
These installations are called Hesperidium, which is the fruit of a citrus tree. The raw material is dried citrus peels- naval oranges, clementines, blood orange, grapefruit, pomelo, lemon, tangerine, cara cara oranges, that I gild, using gold leaf. Peeling the orange in this way is meditative, it pulls me into the present moment, focusing on slicing the orange in an even line with my nail. Separating the rind from the fruit reminds me of working in clay, it has a memory, and dries oddly where it is pushed too hard. Eating the fruit is an experience of tasting the sweetness, smelling the citrus, separating the fruit segments with my hands and allowing the juice to run down. Installed with multiple elements impacts a space in a meaningful way, causing people to pause and consider, trying to figure out what they are looking at. Patterns emerge and unfold, each installation is different, influenced by the space and the client.
I began creating the elements for the installations at that time, but since these are raw natural materials I waited nearly 10 years before taking on a commission to install these in a space other than my own so I could test the integrity and longevity of the citrus peels.
Hesperidium installations are currently in Maine, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, in both residential and commercial spaces.
