Why Bring Me Flowers When I’m Dead? When You Had The Time To Do It When I Was Alive

Written By Jaklin Romine

An ongoing series of photographic images that document the flowers I source in the downtown Los Angeles flower market to give to my grandmother. She is the one who originally made the title statement about a year ago. This series of photographs come from a place of remembrance and celebration of the love and connection I have with my grandmother, mí abuela, that will last forever. Since then I have documented 39 different weeks of flowers that have been arranged and taken photographs of for my home and gifted an arrangement for her home. I use digital sublimation on chiffon, chartreuse, and hang the images of the flowers in a completely unconventional way where I break the language between image and object hood. Simultaneously, creating fabric sculptures out of lace, iridescent organza, and chartreuse, that are mounted behind or lay beneath the fabric print creating an abstraction of the image that allows for the breaking of reality and the expected. Which allows the art to float  between installation, sculpture, and photography on top of a fabric scape that pushes photography into the third dimension. 

Jaklin Romine

Jaklin Romine was born in Burbank, California, and currently lives in East Los Angeles. She studied Studio Arts at Cal State LA, where she was selected to be part of the Luckman Project. She then showed in galleries around Los Angeles, such as Gallery 825, and Avenue 50, before completing her Masters of Fine Arts at CalArts. Since graduating Romine was selected to participate in the Emerging Artist 2018 show at the Barnsdall Art Park, Los Angeles, CA. Other exhibitions include New Women Space, New York, NY; Navel, Los Angeles, CA; and Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Romine has lectured on her work at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Cal Arts, Valencia, CA as part of their ArtChangeUS: Arts in a Changing America five year initiative; and The Main Museum of Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been featured in multiple issues of Sacha Baumann’s broadsheet, Full Blede and at the beginning of 2019 she was featured on the cover in conjunction with her participation in Continuant, a group show at Noysky Projects, Hollywood, CA. She received the Rema Hort Foundation 2019 Emerging Artist Grant which assisted her in creating her latest body of work that was shown in her first solo show, Why bring me flowers when I’m dead ? When you had the time to do it when I was alive/Living with SCI, PSLA, Los Angeles, CA.