261 Flower Sleeves
October 16, 2024 - September 6, 2025
At Maine MILL, 35 Canal St. Lewiston, ME 04240. WE-SA 10-4 or by appointment.
I am developing a mixed media installation that departs from photography. I’m working with Maine MILL and Miia Zellner, a Lewiston based Deaf multi media artist, to create a conceptual installation for the one-year commemoration of the October 25, 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.
In this installation, we used all 261 plastic flower bouquet sleeves left at the spontaneous memorials created after the October 25, 2023 mass shootings at Just-in-Time Recreation and Schemengee’s Bar and Grille in Lewiston, Maine. Each flower sleeve hangs from the ceiling in its own form and direction creating a space that visitors can walk through, touch, and experience in their own way.
Through the medium of reclaimed plastic flower sleeves, the work will explore loss, the role of impermanent expressions, and the impetus behind shared community recovery from the effects of mass violence. The forms created from the sleeves are elegiac and ghost-like, evoking the devastation of traumatized communities. The work is guided by the terrible fact that 40,000- 50,000 people die from gun violence every year in the United States. The ripple effect of trauma from one event moves from the inner circle of victim families, friends, and survivors to the community in which they occur, to the state, to the country, and to the world.
Both the flowers and sleeves are unique objects but also the same, much like how we all respond to trauma. You can feel both an individual response and a collective grieving. It’s something we all do together and yet the varying bouquets and sleeves represent individuality. This work will literally and visually join together individual experiences of the tragedy, incorporating a variety of perspectives, including those of the Deaf community who were so directly affected by this awful event. These pieces will unify our shared burden and help to illuminate the path of moving forward together.
