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The next shipment of Exquisite Flowers Calendar 2023 is set to arrive the 2nd week of January 2023, beautifully crafted with luxurious soft cover and unique photography of beautifully exquisite flowers selected from my 2022 Exquisite Flowers line of fine art gifts and products. This series seeks to reframe the classical flower portraits of the European tradition through my lens, honoring my indigenous ancestors, and the lessons passed to me about the importance of Nature and preserving for future generations, as well as my complex human story & heritage. ArtSpan Open Studios in November 2022 was my first in-person event since the de Saisset Museum group exhibit in 2018-2019 and the Indexical-Carmina Escobar public art commission in 2019, with the second portion in 2020 by Zoom. One of the questions I was asked most often during open studios was, 'why flowers? and a marked departure from your exhibited photography?,' referring to my personal photography projects, such as the Landless Indian series from 2001-2021. I wrote up an Artist Statement with a deeper dive if you are interested, and share here a bit about this year's focus on celebrating and honoring the Natural world as the globe continues to ride out wave after wave of COVID varients. This series draws attention to the ways that Nature - by extension, flowers - showed up consistently day after day as a solid companion for so many of us in those worst times of lock-down and protective isolation. I think of how the natural world rebounded in our time-out. Animals, birds, the air, our ocean, every aspect of our natural world benefited and began to rejuvenate, while the bravest creatures ventured back out to roaming spots they had been pushed out generations ago. We were given an opportunity to reimagine our futures as sustainable and in co-existence with Nature. Their return a sign of hope in a time of great despair, few places were unscathed, while most communities were plunged into great loss. Like many people around the world, I lost loved ones to COVID complications. Like many, I was unable to be there at their sides, an unthinkable reality I could not have dreamed. I hope you will enjoy your 2023 Exquisite Flowers Calendar and check out any of the line of Exquisite art gifts.

I want to thank San Francisco ArtSpan #SFOS2022 for such a fun art fall season - the first in-person since the pandemic - and for selecting me for a 2022 Premier Artist Equity Grant, opening up new connections with local art lovers, fine art collectors, galleries & venues. I want to thank the amazing ArtSpan crew who have been so welcoming. Hummingbird Studio is open for Weekend 4 (see RSVP info above) with the launch of a new line of fine art gifts, calendar and fun home and office products created from the 2023 Exquisite Flower Series. The Exquisite Flower Series is a new project that started a few years ago, and grew out of a life -long fascination with taking photos of flowers. Still, I was pulled by my love of photojournalism and cherished every assignment as an opportunity to grow as a photographer. I grew up surrounded by the photography of my grandparents, and my Dad, whose photo of John Kennedy hung on the wall in the hallway entrance of my grandparents home. Photos also marked in location where family members were located, and what milestone had been passed. An analogue Facebook. Flowers came back to me in 2015 during a long recovery process after a 2008 needle aspiration injury that damaged my right arm nerve, provoked immediate and severe physical and mobility disability, and impacted my and my family's life forever. I needed to hold on to beauty. I held on to the flowers as I lost, first, my father, then two dear cousins, countless elders and cultural bearers and then, this past August, my dear brother, from COVID & Long-COVID. I needed to hold on to hope. The Exquisite Flower Series was born with the 2020 lock-down, going around the block an escape, flowers the symbol life was continuing on just fine despite the unfolding dramatic events. Nature had been my teacher all along. The trauma of the injury, sudden disability and the fallout from an injury at a hospital made nature my strength and healing. The Exquisite Flower Series came out of my studio into the world in the first Exquisite Flower Series Calendar, 2022. A line of fine art gifts and prints has sprouted alongside the 2023 Exquisite Flower Series Calendar with the intention of sharing with you the same hope, inspiration, strength and healing for these times where everyone is called to stand for the future we wish to see for the next generations, joining hands across lines for the long view and to honor all our ancestors. For more products, click on the Store tab above.