Jung’s term for the feminine part of a man’s personality, ‘anima’, provided me with the initial concept for this exhibit: the duality of female and male personas and characteristics in a living organism.

While we admire the inherent beauty of a flower, we are mostly unaware that within the folds of its petals it embodies a duality of male and female characteristics: the male stamen and pollen and the female pistil and ovule.

The role of a flower is essentially to attract pollination by animals and insects. Once this is achieved, it ages and withers, metamorphosing into its male persona: the seedpod, which nurtures and disperses its seeds for propagation and survival of its species. This basic tenant has parallels to other forms of life on earth including that of humans: fertilization~ growth ~ maturity ~ demise.

Underlying this equation is the metaphysical concept of time and change that embodies the transforming process of beauty and decay: time~ change ~ beauty ~ decay.

The images in this exhibition document the beauty that exists during the transformation of various plants, from bud to bloom to the expended seedpod and it reinforces the Jungian idea of the embodiment of the sexual duality, which exists in many life forms, including humans.

“… if ignorant man marvels at the exceptional; the wise man marvels at the common; and the greatest wonder of all is the regularity of Nature”.
– MahatmaGandhi 1869 ~ 1948