Grapes Collection

Grapes were my first and constantly evolving botanical series. Although a Teetotaler, my grandmother loved grapes as designs on her everyday flatware, glass and ceramic serving pieces many of which I use to this day. Our Brandenburg heritage inspired some of the bolder regal designs.

 

My friend Pat Brodowski, now retired head heirloom gardener, at Monticello, arranged my entry with the other gardeners. Just after dawn, alone with vines gifted to Thomas Jefferson when he was ambassador to France, each plant carefully identified and labeled. Tracing selected leaves, photographing grape clusters and vines informed me more about the different varieties, lobes of leaf, twists of vines. The Cabernet Sauvignon are realistic flowing interpretations like those in Art Nouveau. Others have been abstracted into a more geometric and symmetrical Art Deco Style.

 

The Grape Palmette is a series within a series: created when a grape cluster was substituted for the acanthus leaf in the palmette decorative border between narratives about the lives of Greek women on the fantastic vases of the Walters Museum . This special exhibit honored not goddesses, but ordinary women who were educated, could divorce, run business and own property in ancient Greece. The Grape Palmette series is all about dignified and elegant, independent women