By 1996 I had become increasingly interested in environmental issues, seeing the “Pink Projects” as not only commenting on gender marketing but also the waste that accompanies consumption. My next piece, “The Garden” (first exhibited at Yoshii Gallery, NYC, 1996), is an artificial garden one can enter, a room densely packed and layered with recycled manufactured items (mainly gathered from free thrift shops at New England dumps and transfer stations) representing/depicting flowers and creatures found in gardens and associated with women. A quilt of floral dresses covers the ceiling and walls, creating a canopy for the garden glowing beneath. Lamps are encrusted with plastic daisies; tall bunny rabbits smothered in fake flowers stand guard.

Floors are flooded with blossoms; a floral love seat and adorned bed sit among clusters of floral consumer commodities appearing to have grown over every square inch of surface. In creating this work I was thinking about how ideas of nature and beauty are marketed to women. “The Garden” centers on ideas of artificial beauty, consumerism and cultural ideas around the feminine aspects of nature.