Pillow Talk (Black) and Pillow Talk (Pink)
Crystal Archive Prints
48 x 48 inches, each
Edition of 5
Published by Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art, NYC

In the spring of 2013, the National Trust for Historic Preservation invited me to create a site-specific installation at Philip Johnson’s Glass House estate in New Canaan, CT. While developing what was to become SNAP!, my intervention/installation with Johnson’s “Da Monsta” pavilion, I explored the estate’s forty-odd acres and found the peculiar peony garden David Whitney, Johnson’s partner, had kept. The title Pillow Talk comes from one of the peony varietals Whitney maintained for over forty years at the Glass House. The first time I saw his garden was in wintertime and all that was visible were dozens of varietal placards staked into the frozen soil that read “Hit Parade,” “Old Faithful,” “Chocolate Soldier,” “Do Tell,” and “Cream Delight.” My surprise at coming across such fanciful language in the dead of winter and in contrast to the disciplined architecture inspired me to make these images. I magnified the reproductive organs of this specimen using a technique I’d developed for my series Seducers when I was artist-in-residence at Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny.