Florilegium, from the latin flos (“flowers”) and legre (“gathering”), is the sacred act of collecting fine extracts from a larger body of work; literally a gathering of flowers. Used by medieval monks and pagan philosophers alike, I was severely struck by the significance of this term when I encountered it in a contemporary sacred reading context. It put words to the root of what drives my art practice — the gathering of things that shine uniquely to me from the margins, and the conversation that occurs when I've drawn them together. This practice asks viewers and makers alike to value what might be small and unnoticed, what otherwise might be left by the wayside. It's called commonplacing, and it means the world to me. This is a practice I’ve been keeping long before I had the language to describe it — a sacred reading of my surroundings. 

I made Florilegium for my final project in an introductory Sculpture class in the fall of 2023 at UCLA. I carved details from my life —gathered wires and beams of sunlight and objects from significant moments, special places, singular memories— onto a leaflet of a table I found on the side of the road near my apartment. This was my attempt to externalize my own sacred reading, to make a piece that embodied this practice in form and technique. Florilegium is a quiet recollection of what I was missing, where I was missing, who I was missing at the time of its creation.