I’ve never seen anything like spring in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, California where home gardens overflow with roses, all colors and sizes, the night air heavy with their scent. Every house is planted with flowers from all over the world, many from New Zealand which has much the same climate, thriving alongside glowing golden California poppies and pink jasmine. Along the roadsides even the waste areas are full of cornflowers and baby blue eyes. Stanford campus seems to be designed with a paintbrush and palette in hand, bushes alive with fringe flower and bottle brush. Wandering the hills brought me to miner’s lettuce and Mediterranean stork’s bill. Even the ocean shares its color treasures at Monterey Bay where the research station’s tiny beach is awash in tiny keyhole limpet shells, as if she too wanted to participate in the spring glory. This piece was made for my friend, Elisabeth, with whom I shared the experience of spring in California.
 
The piece is design on Japanese Unryu paper fleck with kozo (mulberry) fiber from the bark of that tree.
 
Cornflower, glory bush, fringe flower, nasturtium, bougainvillea, banks grevillea, rock rose, California poppy, bottle brush, baby blue eyes, borage, cape rain daisy, Indian hawthorn, Marguerita Lilly Pilli, pink jasmine, miner’s lettuce, cherry, cobra lily, evening primrose, rose, aster, drooping lobelia, kangaroo paws, Mediterranean stork’s bill, sea lavender, euphorbia, tidy tips, blue Dick, fuchsia, ice flower, Bermuda buttercup, gazania, grass, cicada wing, keyhole limpet shells
 
23x29
Matte giclée print on watercolor paper