Iris Adrienne Langlois-Smith

Garden Tiles

Air-dry ceramic, resin, glass, stones, plastic and glass beads, rusty nail, agate, plant matter, silver charm.

“In Garden Tiles (2021) I explore the duality of the English garden, which exists as a site where order is imposed on nature and exotic plants are collected from colonized lands, but also simultaneously as site of childhood magic, filled with faeries and wonder (Uglow). I’m considering the many different kinds of order imposed on nature: systems of taxonomy, urban development, and Christian scripture. Robin Wall Kimmerer describes the way that our creation stories shape our relationship to the land. She writes “Look at the legacy of poor Eve’s exile from Eden: the land shows the bruises of an abusive relationship” (9). I’m considering the ways in which nature is interrupted, by pollution or other human intervention, but grows around these interruptions and reminds us that the boundaries are permeable. The natural world is transient, mesmerizing and powerful. I’m drawing parallels here between the order that is imposed upon women, who are coded as messy and defective when they deviate from imposed standards of tidiness (Skelly, 51). And in a very personal way I explore certain personal experiences—as interruptions which the body and the heart grow around. These garden tiles represent sensitivity, order and disorder, vulnerability, pollution, and the sacred.Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. Penguin Books, 2013.Uglow, Jennifer S. A Little History of British Gardening. Pimlico, 2005.Skelly, Julia. Radical Decadence: Excess in Contemporary Feminist Textiles and Craft. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.”