Behind "American Grown": Tiffanie Turner

9 September - 18 November 2023

Tiffanie Turner's sculptures of flowers deform, reform, pile up, contradict, and contort what we think of as a typical blossom. She pulls focus away from the specific blooms depicted, but uses their floral familiarity and allure to draw the viewer into her artwork and the meaning behind them.

 

Turner's work connects the associations and formal similarities of certain flowers with recognizable objects and themes to take on agism, sexism, conventional beauty standards, generational differences, marriage, and motherhood. Much of her work is faded, aged, or mutated, all metaphors of the impact of aging on our own bodies as well as a metaphor for some of the darker parts of American culture. 

The full body of sculptures in American Grown is the result of two and a half years of work. Turner had three tenets as her guiding principles for American Grown.  One, to become "anti-circle," to physically change her work from wall-mounted, front-facing circles, to forms that were conical, multi-directional, angled, upward, mirrored, elongated, and beginning to defy gravity. 

 

Second, after almost a decade of thinking about and staring at nothing but flowers in her work, she sought to draw on resemblances she noticed between flowers and other earthly objects, both natural and manmade. She drew on those resemblances, associations, and formal similarities to imbue meaning into her sculptures.

 

The third and final tenet was to connect this work back to her childhood, comparing and contrasting the standards and safeguards around the raising of her two children with memories of her grandparents and parents, focusing on the timeframe of 1950 to 2050.  Through her use of extraordinary detail and oversized beauty and decay, Turner presents American Grown, a meditation on her own life and American culture.

Tiffanie Turner 
American Grown
Sept 9 - Nov 18 2023


  • 580085

    Paper mâché, Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, cardboard, wood rods, rubber balls, 32 1/2 x 33 x 15 in
    Turner made this piece as a brain exercise, to see if she could. She added two or three rose petals... Turner made this piece as a brain exercise, to see if she could. She added two or three rose petals... Turner made this piece as a brain exercise, to see if she could. She added two or three rose petals... Turner made this piece as a brain exercise, to see if she could. She added two or three rose petals... Turner made this piece as a brain exercise, to see if she could. She added two or three rose petals... Turner made this piece as a brain exercise, to see if she could. She added two or three rose petals...
    Turner made this piece as a brain exercise, to see if she could. She added two or three rose petals to one side, and then struggled to mirror them on the other. Turner's 580085 is a sculpture constructed like a Rorschach test with four rose blooms. It  asks us to look at the blooms and choose what we see. Do we see the deformity of a mutated double bloom? Do we see the sculpture as beautiful?  Do we see differences as alluring or do we only see a single perfect rose bloom as the “right” kind of bloom? Turner is always playing with our perceptions of beauty and “normalcy,” guiding us to see imperfection as interesting, as a “fasciation," as a botanist would term a deviation in a flower.

  • Byproduct/Burnt Offerings (Ranunculus)

    Paper mâché, Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, Quik-Tube, 27 x 27 x 29 3/4 in
    Turner has always, always seen ashes in the way the petals of a ranunculus relate to each other and how... Turner has always, always seen ashes in the way the petals of a ranunculus relate to each other and how... Turner has always, always seen ashes in the way the petals of a ranunculus relate to each other and how... Turner has always, always seen ashes in the way the petals of a ranunculus relate to each other and how... Turner has always, always seen ashes in the way the petals of a ranunculus relate to each other and how... Turner has always, always seen ashes in the way the petals of a ranunculus relate to each other and how...
    Turner has always, always seen ashes in the way the petals of a ranunculus relate to each other and how they form more of a cylindrical shape than most flowers. Especially when they are just about to fall apart a few days or weeks after being cut. She also has a long-standing, gag-reflex-inducing disdain and disgust about cigarette ash. Turner's mother and both of her grandmothers smoked (all have ended up with lung cancer), and she remembers being absolutely repulsed by ash, as it gets everywhere. This is one of the pieces where it just fell together perfectly, with the artist thinking about how her mother would smoke on the plane right next to her and in the car and in her office, and how now those sorts of things are unheard of. Part of the "compare and contrast" between how Turner was raised and how she and her husband  are bringing up their children. 
     
    Technically, for this piece the artist hand-stained all of the black/gray ash and the more brownish bits closer to the white unburnt filter with new techniques she created with black concentrated liquid radiant watercolor and a water bath. The paper can withstand being fully soaked and dried, fun to note. The ash pattern matches the pattern in some variegated ranunculus like the cultivar Cafe Caramel. The head was built on Turner's standard paper maché sewn bucket (paper maché balloon form with an end cut off, inverted, and sewn back on to give it a recess to build into – it's in her book) and the longer part onto a Quik-Tube. This piece took about three months of work to finish. The title comes from both ash being a byproduct, and Burnt Offerings being Turner's absolute favorite movie since she was a little girl, one that gave her nightmares when she was younger, but also stuck with her subconsciously, as Turner has realized, in the way she likes to inhabit other people's spaces as her own whenever she is given a chance. If you know that movie, you know.

  • Excerpt from Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Table Top

    Paper mâché, Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, wood rods, cardboard, 31 x 29 x 21 1/2 in
    This rose is taken out of the painting by Rachel Ruysch titled 'Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop',... This rose is taken out of the painting by Rachel Ruysch titled 'Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop',... This rose is taken out of the painting by Rachel Ruysch titled 'Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop',... This rose is taken out of the painting by Rachel Ruysch titled 'Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop',... This rose is taken out of the painting by Rachel Ruysch titled 'Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop',... This rose is taken out of the painting by Rachel Ruysch titled 'Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop',... This rose is taken out of the painting by Rachel Ruysch titled 'Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop',...
    This rose is taken out of the painting by Rachel Ruysch titled "Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop", completed in 1716. The flower at its best is meant to be viewed head-on, as that is what you see in Ruysch's painting. The challenge for the artist was not only to create the hues and highlights in Ruysch's rose, but to capture the angle at which it rests in the still life. 
     
    Ruysch was the mother of ten children and we must presume that she was only able to continue to paint if she was able to afford childcare. Turner ties this into a common working mother's story today as well as to her own story.
  • Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop, Rachel Ruysch, 1716, oil on canvas, 48.5cm x 39.5cm

    Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop, Rachel Ruysch, 1716

    oil on canvas, 48.5cm x 39.5cm

  • Turner's Idea Board for "Excerpt from Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Table Top"

  • Indurate (of a size that is remarkable)

    Paper mâché, Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, wood rods, metal rods, wood slats, Quik-Tube, basketball hoop frame, 29 x 46 x 58 in
    This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head.... This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head.... This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head.... This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head.... This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head.... This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head.... This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head.... This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head.... This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head....
    This piece is driven by the flower it resembles: the echinacea supreme coneflower, a lesser-known echinacea with a gumdrop-like head. Turner adores the flower, so much that she put one (small scale) in her book, and it has always reminded her, for better or worse, of the head of a penis. The coloring on this piece is mostly done by submerging the ombré pink and white paper in different strengths of tea baths and is very accurate to the colors you can see in this flower in nature.
     
    Indurate (a verb meaning "to make hard") grew more and more crucial to include in this show for many reasons. Conceptually, it is here as a symbol of raising children and having to deal with keeping them safe and keeping them away from porn. When Turner was growing up, parents had to keep their stacks of Hustler magazines and their vibrators hidden; raising her children now, it's more like a war with their devices, one she and her husband will probably never truly know if they are winning or not. Indurate is also as a reminder that it's unlikely that there is a single person who has not been touched by a man in one way or another that was harmful to them. Either via assault or via the patriarchy (or, one way or another), there is no one who has not been affected by the power that a man has. It has been pointed out that the way in which this piece is horizontal on the plinth gives the impression that this phallic object seems exhausted. 
     
    Last year Turner was reading an article in ARTFORUM about artist Mona Hatoum. Referring to a few of her large scale works depicting oversized kitchen gadgets, the journalist writes "The classic Surrealist move of enlarging a quotidian object helps us see the harm and asks us to look more closely, to reassess the common sense that intimacy means comfort, that domesticity means safety." This stayed with her as Turner made this piece, and a few others. The "(of a size that is remarkable)" in the title is for fun.

  • Cockscomb Rose

    Paper mâché, Italian crepe paper, stain, spray paint, glue, wood rods, metal rod, cardboard, soft pastel, 36 1/2 x 45 x 20 in
    Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries... Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries... Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries... Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries... Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries... Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries... Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries... Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries... Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a 'cockscomb' strawberry. Roses and strawberries...
    Cockscomb Rose is modeled after the commonly found fasciated (malformed) strawberry, which is called a "cockscomb" strawberry. Roses and strawberries are in the same Rosaceae family, so maybe it is natural that the artist found tea roses the best flower to use for this sculpture. As an artist who works with botany, Turner often receives images from people of mutated flowers, usually with some sort of message about mutation due to radiation. As someone who has been working with mutated imagery for several years, she has had the chance to learn all about natural mutations like fasciation, phyllody, and petalody, so Turner is usually happy to tell people that what they are seeing is not the result of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, but nature just doing its thing. In this body of work, Cockscomb Rose ties into her desires to incorporate food into the work, but more importantly reminds the artist of growing up with the fear of nuclear war present in the 80's, when nuclear anxiety in North America ran very high, and how the modern day threats to human life from climate catastrophe are not only anxiety-causing, but very much here and present for current generations. 
     
    A technical note about this piece:
    This is the first time Turner ever spray painted her paper (Always before using it, never after the petals are put on the flower). This was actually recommended to her by Eleanor Harwood several years ago, but there was no need to until this piece, where Turner wanted to change up the palette from the colors of crepe paper she gets from the factory in Italy. The colors are a bit more matte, but they do glow in a beautiful way. Due to the pandemic and some weather issues across the United States in 2020 and 2021, there was a massive spray paint shortage. The artist began this working on this sculpture in the summer of 2021 before she ran out of paint, and picked it back up to complete it in the summer of 2023. 

  • Soup to Nuts

    Paper mâché, Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, wood rods, cardboard, ribbons, 30 x 36 x 17 in
    'Soup to nuts' is a phrase Turner's dear paternal grandmother 'G.G.' used often, meaning 'from the very beginning to the... 'Soup to nuts' is a phrase Turner's dear paternal grandmother 'G.G.' used often, meaning 'from the very beginning to the... 'Soup to nuts' is a phrase Turner's dear paternal grandmother 'G.G.' used often, meaning 'from the very beginning to the... 'Soup to nuts' is a phrase Turner's dear paternal grandmother 'G.G.' used often, meaning 'from the very beginning to the... 'Soup to nuts' is a phrase Turner's dear paternal grandmother 'G.G.' used often, meaning 'from the very beginning to the... 'Soup to nuts' is a phrase Turner's dear paternal grandmother 'G.G.' used often, meaning 'from the very beginning to the... 'Soup to nuts' is a phrase Turner's dear paternal grandmother 'G.G.' used often, meaning 'from the very beginning to the...
    "Soup to nuts" is a phrase Turner's dear paternal grandmother "G.G." used often, meaning "from the very beginning to the very end." Because she was thinking so much of the different generations of my family, especially G.G., as Turner did this work, this phrase ran through her head several times. This is the only piece she has ever made that came from a sketch first. The artist drew this out on an envelope, a fresh, breast/rose bud-like bloom on the left and an open, falling apart rose head on the right, with a big, wide-ribboned bow in the middle. While Turner wants to continue her exploration of genitalia vis-à-vis flowers, she didn't want them to stand out in this show, so this is a subtle nod to her past "sexy" work. This piece is about starting out hopeful and fresh (perky, even!) in a marriage, and through the passage of time and ups and downs of a relationship and/or family and/or raising children, you come out worn out. Whether that is good or bad is dependent on the viewer's own personal experience. For Turner, so far, so good.
     
    The artist has started to integrate ribbons in her work as they have been a prominent element of floristry tracing back to the Byzantine Empire, and they are so very attractive. In the initial sketch of Soup to Nuts, Turner knew there would be a bow joining or commemorating the two sides of the sculpture. She started collecting blue scarves and ribbons for the piece, eventually deciding on three beautiful, wide ribbons in different blue hues, to evoke the saying "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue."

  • Originalism (December 15, 1791 - present)

    Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, floral wire, chalk, vintage flag pole holder, ribbons, 23 x 15 x 14 in
    The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right... The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right... The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right... The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right... The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right... The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right... The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right... The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right...
    The title of this sculpture refers to the ratification of the Bill of Rights which put into law the right to bear arms. It contains fifteen dead flowers (peonies, symbolizing shame in some cultures), one each for “15” in the ArmaLite semi-automatic rifle model AR-15. “Originalism” refers to the “principle or belief that a text should be interpreted in a way consistent with how it would have been understood or was intended to be understood at the time it was written.” Turner made it to address proponents of constitutional originalism and the continuation of gun violence in the United States, the faded bunch of flowers (symbolically set in a wall-mounted flag pole holder and wrapped in stained, patriotic-colored ribbons) stands in as a memorial and a meditation on gun deaths in America.
     
    As mentioned in the artist statement for American Grown, after examining her distain for being an American over the past three years, above all, gun violence was the one particular and specific characteristic Turner could not identify with any other culture but ours. We all know this. The artist have low-grade anxiety about this every day when she drops her son Oliver off at school, and it is why their family doesn't participate in certain things they used to anymore. Turner is waiting for someone to come through and fix this for our country, because she has no idea of what to do.
     
    This piece took around four months to complete.

  • Croquembouche

    Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, floral wire, chalk, chicken egg shells, hat stand, metal platter on pedestal, epoxy adhesive, 26 1/2 x 15 in
    This piece was meant to be a giant piece, with thousands of roses on a palette, like piles of jeans... This piece was meant to be a giant piece, with thousands of roses on a palette, like piles of jeans... This piece was meant to be a giant piece, with thousands of roses on a palette, like piles of jeans... This piece was meant to be a giant piece, with thousands of roses on a palette, like piles of jeans... This piece was meant to be a giant piece, with thousands of roses on a palette, like piles of jeans...
    This piece was meant to be a giant piece, with thousands of roses on a palette, like piles of jeans waiting to ship. Turner always intended to have the rotting roses on the bottom, the whole thing a disgusting tribute to the waste we cannot stop creating across all commercial industries. The artist realized a few weeks in that working around the clock she could only make on average eight roses, so decided to bring the scale down substantially. Turner has a huge affinity for cuisine as art – think Jules Gouffé or Salvador Dalí – so it came to her to create a croquembouche from these English roses, their heads each about the size of the cream puffs used for this creation. Food runs through the show, as there was an element of elegant food preparation that came from one of Turner's grandmothers, while the artist may never have tasted food made by the other, and she thought a lot about her grandparents while making this work.
     
    Some notes about the piece itself:
    Each rose is built inside a real chicken's eggshell. There are 114 roses in the piece, and the artist and her family ate every egg. The roses are finished all the way to their calyces and stems, and are only attached to a center post by wire, so that each rose is actually independent and unmarred by attachment to each other. This piece took four to five months to finish, and Turner had to return to it several times because she would become discouraged never having enough roses to finish it each time she went to add more to the conical shape.

  • The (Brown) Crown

    Paper mâché, Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, wood rods, wood skewers, cardboard mailing tube, basketball hoop frame, misc. hardware bits, 32 x 38 x 38 1/2 in
    This piece was physically the hardest, but one of the most important. Turner has always made her work facing forward,... This piece was physically the hardest, but one of the most important. Turner has always made her work facing forward,... This piece was physically the hardest, but one of the most important. Turner has always made her work facing forward,... This piece was physically the hardest, but one of the most important. Turner has always made her work facing forward,... This piece was physically the hardest, but one of the most important. Turner has always made her work facing forward,... This piece was physically the hardest, but one of the most important. Turner has always made her work facing forward,...
    This piece was physically the hardest, but one of the most important. Turner has always made her work facing forward, so big heads of flowers that just faced dead ahead. After her last show with Eleanor Harwood Gallery, this became apparent, so the artist did a few pieces that start to challenge that, usually multiple headed pieces like Double Chrysanthemum and Three Chrysanthemums. The shape of this piece is in close proportion to the raspberry lemonade peony, a very vertical bloom, and one that has always reminded Turner of a crown. It evokes the idea of the beacon of colonialism under the crown and  "civil" society in general, the worm hole eaten through the ride side portraying that the bright and shiny facade is not the same as what really exists underneath.
     
    To get this piece to hold itself off of the wall in the manner it does, facing upward, it had to be rigged so it hangs on the wall almost horizontally, like a hammock, and then has structure pushing back against the wall so it doesn't collapse on itself. It took quite a while to engineer this, but the final solution included a basketball hoop, and several reinforced cardboard mailing tubes hidden amongst the petaloids.

  • Did I Win?

    Paper mâché, Italian crepe paper, stain, glue, steel aerialist hoop, cardboard, plastic ball, 50 x 49 x 22 in
    Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of... Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of... Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of... Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of... Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of... Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of... Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of... Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of...
    Turner has been collecting and drying various roses to use as specimens for her work for years, so each of the roses in this piece is the best rendition of the eight roses depicted. The ring of roses started as another food-reminiscent piece for this show, a crown rack of lamb. As the artist built it, it became beautiful as just a ring of roses, maybe a crown, maybe spent roses clinging for air at the rim of a wide vase. Turner began to think tying the vintage rope she had bought to represent the kitchen twine used to hold a rack of lamb together was not going to read well in this configuration. So now it is just what it is, a ring of dried roses, as beautiful to the artist as when they were fresh.
     
    The title Did I Win? came from a family "in" joke. When Turner's daughter Stella was around four or five years old, the family was hosting a playdate with one of her young friends. They had just finished playing a board game and the boy asked "Did I win?" As innocent as that was, it was also very in line with the personality of this particular little boy, and became something the family says to each other quite frequently to make each other laugh. This piece is very much about perspective. Do you see these roses as beautiful, like Turner does, or maybe not? When you are older, and you have physically changed, can you still see yourself and others as beautiful, or maybe not? What is winning, at the end of it all, and did I win?
     
    The flower heads in this piece are mounted to a very heavy duty aerialist hoop and it is very simple to hang. 
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