July 2018

Portraits of Place: Plants of Palermo

This tile fresco represents the second in my Portraits of Place series on humans and nature, in which I explore the in-between spaces, the places where cities spill over into the nature around them, and where nature spills right back into the cities, shaping and influencing them.

I created this after spending two weeks in Palermo, Italy, in July 2018 on an artists residency with CCT-SeeCity. My days were spent exploring the city’s alleys and beaches, sketching plants and tiles and statues, and gaining a feel for the way that the city is shaped by the plants growing through the crevices. Some plants, like prickly pear and oleander, felt familiar from the chaparral of my childhood in Southern California; others, like the dangling squash and the strangler fig, reminded me that the city I was exploring was new to me. The tiles peppered throughout the city, in walls and benches and roads, are also a defining part of the city’s visual identity. I wanted to capture the way these wove together in my final illustration: a lino print of the city and its plants as tiles.