I am often afraid of being stuck in ruts and repeating myself. I fear that I use the same plant material over and over each season. I try not to repeat the same shape or backdrop, but this afternoon as I wandered in my garden I thought, maybe there is value to mining what comes naturally, that which is in my own backyard.

While she [Ruth Asawa] was at Black Mountain College, she confessed to her mentor Josef Albers, that she wanted to paint flowers instead of pursuing the more formal, abstract work popular at the time. He told her, “You can paint flowers, but make sure that they’re Asawa flowers.”

–From a wonderful commentary by Wendy MacNaughton in her Draw Together newsletter. The quote comes from an oral history interview with Ruth Asawa and her husband, Albert Lanier, June 21-July 5, 2002 (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution).