“Prints, Flowers, and Hats” was a little photo project I started when Violeta was 13 months old to document her second year on this planet. My husband and I had gone crazy documenting her first year with a video every week! So this project seemed like a break, taking just one photo, once a month, with a different printed background behind her, a different hat on her head, and a different flower in her hands. It was especially fun to give her really big flowers to hold onto that were bigger than she was at the time.
I will also note that I know I am probably a bit crazy about documenting this girl’s life. I love to do it. I blame it on the fact that I am the fourth child in my family, and there are far fewer photos of my childhood than of my older siblings. I have been overly documenting my own life ever since I got a polaroid camera for Christmas in the fourth grade. And now that I have her and she’s so cute, I can’t even help myself! Violeta will never have to wonder what she looked like when she was little. She is also such a good sport about all these projects that I dream up for her.
I wasn’t able to be so strict with the concept. Some “prints” are actually woven blankets, and some “flowers” ended up being giant leaves, or berries, or flowers made from paper. The “hats” were indeed all hats, they just didn’t always sit on her head. She has her own ideas and often tossed those hats off her head onto the floor! We had a lot of fun creating these photos. Even though I made the rules for myself for this project, we had fun breaking those rules and just using whatever we could get our hands on at the time.
When the pandemic hit, we became pretty cautious about going to the store for things we didn’t really need. This project fell under the “non-essential” category, so I improvised by making paper flowers that first month, using every printed fabric in our home as a backdrop, from bed sheets to caftans, tablecloths and blankets. Violeta and I made our own citrus-printed backdrop one month using an old white bedsheet and grapefruits as our print blocks. We had a lot of fun with that one.
I am able to buy flowers from an outdoor flower stand in my neighborhood (several actually), so it didn’t feel as risky as going to the flower market. On the other hand, I do seriously miss going to Mercado Jamaica to buy flowers. One of the reasons I made up this photo concept was because I so enjoyed walking through that market to find fun flowers for Violeta to hold. This time of year Mercado Jamaica will be particularly busy as everyone is preparing their ofrendas for Día de los Muertos (November 1 & 2). There will be massive piles of the vibrant orange cempazúchitl flower (flower of the dead, aka marigolds) and everything else you could possibly need to put together an authentic ofrenda to honor your ancestors. It’s a truly incredible flower market, just exploding with color, not to mention that all of the freshly cut flowers piled high smell divine. Ahhhh! The whole place is a sight to see.
We are living in a uniquely strange time. It’s hard to not be sad sometimes when I think about what might have been if the world hadn’t turned upside down in March of 2020. Personally, I had been looking forward to returning to the freelance work that I so enjoyed before I became a mother. Violeta has been getting older and really enjoying school, therefore this would have made it easier for me to make the transition back into my work life. Our little family had been getting ourselves organized so I could take on projects again, and then the world shut down and this was not possible. While everything is okay and we have nothing to truly complain about, I can’t help but be disappointed at times and still miss my work. Designing retail window displays and styling events is not anything the world really needs right now. Therefore, I worry it will be quite some time before I can return to the type of work I used to do–and possibly not at all. Just as I was imagining what it would be like to have a small piece of my old life back, everything changed, and this dream was pushed farther away from me.
I try to remind myself to just keep creating, no matter what it is, because the act of creating and completing projects is what really gives me joy in my work. Completing this project with Violeta is no exception. From that first month with our calla-lily-printed vinyl table cloth taped to the wall and Violeta wearing her tiny sun hat and holding onto those giant calla lilies when she could barely walk, to when she at last turned 2 years old and we took the last photo for this series –we did it!
I hope you enjoy our little photo project: “Prints, Flowers and Hats.” It definitely made me happy to see it through to completion. We had a lot of fun along the way over this past year as this project unfolded. As parents, we can be so busy worrying and providing for our tiny humans that our own needs can take a back seat and can even be forgotten. Self-care is really important for everyone and can look very different for different people. This project was my version of self-care and nurturing my own need to create, that I had previously found through my career. I hope that you are finding time to do whatever it is that makes you feel happy and fulfilled. Whatever that may be, I hope you are doing it and will continue to do so. Take care of yourselves, friends, we’re all in this together.
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