Elif Soyer: Native Pollinators

I have always been uncomfortable naming my show and my work. This show is called _Native Pollinators_ because as I went through the process of working on these pieces, it started to remind me of my garden. I am fortunate, in an urban environment, to have enough of an outdoor space that I can get lost in the details of what grows in it without me having brought it in on purpose. In the beginning, this space was paved with 3 inch deep black top which in turn covered another 7 inches or so of concrete. With the help of time and a sledgehammer the same space is a home for a peach tree, apple trees, a cherry tree, roses, wisteria and other plants we collected and planted over time. 30 years later, what the garden has become though, above and beyond what we have planted on purpose, is a haven for all manner of plants that my dogs, birds, rats, rabbits and who know what other critters (and let's not forget the wind) have brought in and germinated so that starting around late April, the whole space becomes a haven for our native pollinators. I get a great amount of joy spending at least a few minutes of every day snooping around and examining what's growing, "curating" our leafy and flowery guests and bringing some order into the lovely chaos they create. When I started imagining this body of work, none of the above was on my mind. I was just solely determined to go through and repurpose as much of the paint that has over time made my studio its resting place. I also wanted to free myself of specifically image driven work and allow myself to make decisions without labeling any of them as mistakes. A year into the work, I started seeing how the buildup started feeling more and more like my garden space as I started seeing unexpected harmonies and interactions between and among the various colors, textures, shapes, patterns, densities and negative spaces.