The discipline of repetition

Making art from frozen flowers demands a particular kind of discipline. Not the discipline of mastery, but of return. Trying again, adjusting, failing quietly, and trying once more.

Every experiment begins with a choice: which flower, which arrangement, how deep within the ice. Most don't work. A petal turns invisible. A colour disappears. A composition that seemed right becomes something flat and lost. I learn more from these than from the ones that succeed.

Intrinsically Disordered Petals No.8

Different species ask different things of me. Some surrender to the cold gracefully. Others resist, or transform in ways I didn't expect. The arrangement shifts the whole. A few millimetres can change how light finds its way through.

So I return to the process, again and again. This repetition is not tedium. It is where understanding lives.

It mirrors the idea behind the work itself. Intrinsically disordered proteins have no fixed structure. They exist in flux, in potential. My process holds the same quality. Nothing is resolved in advance.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/72c418_f7a95eefbe1d41c18d3bab79ebb4441e/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

The ice holds what I cannot. It fixes a moment that would otherwise pass without trace, suspends a form that was never meant to last. There is something quietly generous in that. The flower does not disappear into the cold. It is kept there, still, within it.