Joanna Chavez

Dead Arrangement, 2022.

Dried flowers, crushed Arizona Tea can

Untitled (Drying Flowers), 2022

Birch wood, fishing line, dried/drying flowers, healing crystals

Untitled (Drying Flowers), Detail

Flortrait, 2022

11 in x 15 in, lithography print

Through the Fire, 2021

11 in x 15 in, pastel chalk on paper

Artist Statement

I am creating work that encompasses the cyclical beauty of nature  – the life, the death, the controlled and the happenstance, the known and the imaginative – all delivered through a partnership and collaboration with life. The work I create harmonizes the outdoor and indoor spaces. Whether it’s interpreted as bringing what’s outside in, or what’s inside out – this conundrum is the intentional marriage of those spaces. 

My work uses material found in nature to challenge what we consider beautiful – using a full spectrum of life and death to create elements and works that instill peace. As humans, we tend to use things until we believe it has reached their full potential. When in actuality, it is the damaged, overburdened, overlooked, strained, that have the potential to overcome the obstacles of being discarded or disregarded. Using discarded things, or wilted, dried/preserved flora, I am creating multidisciplinary work that, when joined together, is a completed installation piece, or safe space, where I am able to share my methods of healing. Along with the natural elements of my work, I will incorporate multiple modes of art-making, i.e. prints, paintings, sculptures, and aromatic elements, that will fill the space in an intentional way that assists in the environment and healing elements.

Happiness. Peace. Reverence. Connection. It is the goal of my work to immerse the audience back into this reality. Back into nature. To find the beauty within themselves – and to provide perspective on life, and death for that matter. To aid in healing, or to provide a calming space for the audience to find a connection. Connection to the works; connection with themselves; connection to life.