AVERY

After years of raising her, Avery was gone from my life. The invisible and glassy barriers between us are petals here, representative of only being able to see her secondhand now, of missing her milestones as she grows up without me. Wooden petals and backing surround this central flower, nearly illegible due to the velvety black paint that covers their surface with hundreds of bone dry clay petals in a gradated black pile below. The coverage in this velvety hue embodies my grief. At first it was all encompassing, but from season to season as petals continue to fall, the grief becomes easier to hold. Where the stain of grief was initially pervasive and suffocating in its coverage of every surface, the farthest petals are variegated, providing strikingly intricate clarity to their form as raw clay becomes visible again.