We had been in quarantine for months, and I had been ordering flowers each week from a friend to help her stay in business.
Iris season had started and she brought me three dozen stems, covered in huge blooms—some warm and pink-yellow like a peach, and most a shimmering white that was nearly grey.

Leslie is the first person I had seen outside of my household in so long. She came to my apartment which stands along a grassy boulevard; we sat far apart, our voices carrying on the breeze to make conversation.

Irises have been a poignant point of focus as I’ve grieved the passing of my father.
Leslie has approached me with tenderness and compassion since his death, and she appreciates how long and unpredictable feeling our way through loss is.

I’m suspicious of images per se, and if they occur in my work, they are usually appropriations rather than inventions, but the voluptuous, lacy blossoms in these bouquets appeared to ask for a kind of impressionism in my looking. Drawn in powder, just a puff of an impression.

This year contains so much loss, personally and across the globe.
There was tremendous sweetness in Leslie’s arrival, our time working together, and then a puff and gone again, our drawings and a couple of photos she took as an easy residue.