Weeds: Overlooked & Underfoot

Created by Chance; Hand-Crafted by Persistence.

This series began with a simple question: why do we celebrate tulips and roses, but scorn the plants we call weeds? They grow everywhere, pushing through cracks in the sidewalk, sprawling along fences, filling empty lots. We step on them, spray them, yank them out by the roots. But in dismissing them, we erase part of the story of the land we live on.

They survive not because we tend to them, but because they persist in spite of us.

I grew up surrounded by dandelions and clover, making chains out of their stems, blowing seed heads into the wind. Back then, they were toys and wishes, not intruders. Later, I noticed how even in manicured towns, nettles and cow parsley leaned stubbornly into the light. Black-eyed Susans sprinkle yellow warmth alongside endless stretches of highway across the west. They had the same quiet persistence, whether in a backyard, an alpine meadow, or a roadside ditch.

Weeds are wildflowers with bad reputations. Many heal or nourish; dandelion salad, nettles brewed into tea or cooked in quiche, clover sweetened with honey, hops turned to beer. Yet we treat them as enemies, though they’ve always lived beside us. To me, they are symbols of resilience, beauty found in what we are taught to overlook.

Weeds remind us that beauty and value is not reserved for the cultivated.

This collection reframes the unwanted. Dandelions, nettles, black-eyed Susans, cow parsley, clovers, hops—they are cut into delicate silhouettes, given the same reverence as roses or tulips. Their forms are striking, their presence undeniable.

Weeds remind us that beauty does not always bloom where we expect it. Sometimes it grows wild, persistent, and unwanted, and still manages to flourish.