We must be so bitter

without wishes

not to send the seeds

of the dandelion’s rosette

parachuting, and keep it intact.

More startling yet

we bloom peonies on our skin,

dispense their scent;

hold exoskeletons of insects near,

carry serpents on our backs.

—-Diane Mehta

In an era of climate warming, rising oceans, biodiversity extinctions and existing oppression of women, my intention is to create visual narratives that honor our being embedded within the natural world.

Poet Diane Mehta has chosen 15 of my artworks to respond with her poetry. Her poems provide new perspectives to my artwork. They create a conversation between the visual and the words. The poems open new ways to experience the art. Here is a PDF of the artwork and poetry.

I identify with the powers Nature gives us and our interdependence with Nature. Recently my work “Cascade” was printed on a banner for an exhibit surrounding Coffey Park in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The theme of the exhibit was “Power, Privilege and Identity” which fits the diversity of people who live there.

In my work, her tattooed snake is a symbol of transformation and renewal. Her cascading roots are like the roots of the trees surrounding her in the park. They speak of our needs for stability, home and nourishment that should be available to all people.

My other banner is titled “Breath”. This work is about our interdependence on trees for the oxygen we breathe. This work is also on my website under “ECO FEMINISM”.

Two of the sponsors for this exhibit are Red Hook Art Project and Arts Gowanus.

I felt privileged to be a part of this Bio Art Residency this May/June of 2025. I explored using microscopes to examine sea creatures and seaweeds. This exploration gave me impetus for new work. At the end of the residency we did exhibits of our work. Here are connections to some of the work I exhibited. https://www.alicegarik.com/work/sea-eye/ https://www.alicegarik.com/work/stars-snakes-sea/ https://www.alicegarik.com/work/biomorphic/

This large, 16 X 20 inch, palladium print is the tail of a shrimp.

One of my prints, from my gelatin silver Iris flower prints, is part of an exhibit at Est. Gallery from Dec. 12, 2024 to Jan. 12, 2025. The curator, Emily Chiavelli, chose art works that didn’t exceed 12 X 12 inches. I am thrilled to have my artwork among the 100 other artworks chosen from over 1,000 entries for this exhibit. Est. Gallery is in Brooklyn, New York.

This November 2024 I have two special, to me, artworks on exhibit in a juried exhibition called “Spectrum of Exposure” at BWAC, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY.

These two works reflect my desires that women, children and nature will flourish despite the violence and destruction we are witnessing. I will share my vision for this particular artwork, “Breathe”, which I am featuring in this post.

I have developed this work with layers of photographs of a woman and her baby, branches of an oak tree and the blossoms of this oak tree. The woman with her birthing baby seem to support the branching oak. The blossoms of the oak tree drape around them. I have printed all the negatives using palladium, which I brush onto handmade Japanese gampi paper. Then I painted green and red pearlescent watercolor. The green is for photosynthesis that trees use to convert carbon dioxide into sugars and release oxygen, which we breathe. The red is our blood, the carrier of oxygen in our bodies.

This work of life and breath is my offering to women, children, plants and animals worldwide.

When in the Gulf of Maine the sea ebbs, the seaweed named Irish moss is revealed. Irish moss cushions living things in layers. Rachel Carson describes this as “life exists on other life, or within it, or under it, or above it” in her book “The Edge of the Sea”.

At Arts Gowanus Open Studios, October 19 and 20, noon to 6 PM, 69 Second Ave., Brooklyn, I will display this camera-less, palladium print in collaboration with this poem by poet Diane Mehta.

Vent a dome, invent a habitat

for tubeworm, sea-stout, eelpout

waltzing, 700 degrees in love.

They must know their origin

is hydrothermal swirling,

that fate is motion-of-lfe

agitating to occupy the world.

On exhibit at ChincharMaloney in Taos, NM https://chincharmaloney.com/shop-art/alice-garik

are fifteen of my unique palladium prints. That the black and white palladium prints are in Taos is significant because in Zuni culture the use of black and white in their pottery represents the upper world. The featured print here of her hands crossed in a flight movement with her bird tattoo relates to the world of spirit.

My palladium prints are handmade using the traditional analogue darkroom techniques of making negatives, either camera-less or photographs with a 4X5 large format camera. Brushing palladium on handmade Japanese gampi, I layer my negatives and expose them using the sun. The resulting montage is spontaneous and suggests movement with the images embedded in a paper with the tactility of silk.

A tattooed SERPENT-DRAGON rests on a nest of twigs. The twigs symbolize the microbial ecosystem we live in and that our bodies extend beyond our skin. Another serpent-dragon grows ROOTS like a tree which symbolize our ability to be rooted. Dandelion seeds disperse and fly as if they had wings intersecting another tattooed serpent-dragon to symbolize our ability to CREATE and nurture.

Lunar New Year 2024 will be the year of the Wood Dragon. The dragon is the only mythic animal in the Chinese Zodiac. It is associated with good luck, health, abundance, and strength. The element of wood is one of the five elements that constitute human and ecological health in traditional acupuncture. My own beliefs about our embeddedness in nature are reinforced by these theories and insights. The wood element is easily seen in trees where their rooted trunks expand with their branches. Extending these thoughts to our own health and well being, the Wood Dragon is about our own rootedness and our abilities to expand and grow.

My artwork embraces our embeddedness in the natural world. With my fingers CARRESSING an Iris, like a honeybee seeking nectar, I see its forms. I rotate the Iris this way and that way to create with my enlarger camera-less 16X20 inch negatives. For me the IRIS is a landscape, an ecosystem in constant becoming, a landscape of transcendence.

I print my negatives with palladium, using sunlight to expose the thin, translucent gampi paper. As I look at one of my prints titled IRIS GEOMETRY, I see how the palladium emulsion is absorbed to reveal the depth of the image.

My handmade artworks, about the metamorphosis that tattooing gives people, are exhibited with the work of two other artists at a boutique hotel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Untitled at 3 Freeman Alley, from November 2023 through February 15, 2024. The exhibit titled “Vital Impetus: Life Signs”, curated by Elizabeth Chatham of AzureArtsNYC is situated in the expansive modern lobby. The hotel aims to provide guests, the “tattoo generation”, with the flavor of New York City with our artworks, murals and even graffiti.

My handmade artistic approach fits with the murals hand painted in the hotel. My works on exhibit are about tattoos. I use film when I photograph people’s tattoos. I enlarge my 4X5 inch film in a wet darkroom and brush palladium on handmade Japanese gampi paper to print my negatives. I use the sun to develop the images.

The handmade Japanese gampi paper, situates the palladium images of tattoos like tattoo ink penetrates skin. Gampi paper is made from a bush found in the mountains and warm areas of Japan. Gampi cannot be cultivated and therefore is rare and the most expensive of the handmade Japanese papers. Its translucency and shiny texture make it ideal for my work incorporating tattoos with fragments of nature. It is the perfect ground for the metamorphosis I seek in my artwork where human tattoos meet fragments of nature. This metamorphosis, I hope, will transform the experience of people sitting in the comfortable lobby as they talk, enjoy coffee and work.