Each flower in Passing Blooms was “picked” from a New Yorker’s attire and recreated as a hand-embroidered piece. The “herbarium” collects all 15 flowers in the series, and includes each flower’s number, location, and date of collection. Photos of the 15 passersby the flowers were “picked from” are also included. 

The piece speaks to the pleasure I find in collecting small details in the urban environment. It also alludes to the overabundance of textile printing that fast fashion incurs: the meticulous and time consuming embroidery process is my attempt to bring attention to these flowers, to the fact that we often stop noticing them, and are quick to discard these pieces of clothing without much thought.
This project combines my passion for traditional media (such as embroidery and print) with the affordances of the digital which I used to easily capture the flowers on the street, to prepare the drawings for embroidery, and to create limited edition print herbarium.

Photographic index of specimens’ origin

Please refer to the number on each flower’s specimen card to find its corresponding person of origin.

Each piece is shown front and back — click to flip.