Published on Sept. 24, 2020

When I was young, movies spun tales of adventure in the jungle and what secrets the plants and animals concealed. This created an illusion of exploration through dense jungles full of colorful flowers. But, the semblance soon diminished when I began to notice how the expansion of cities were affecting tropical rainforests and, eventually, decreasing the number of rare varieties of botanicals in the rainforests.
Thinking back on this memory as a plant science student, I realized the natural exoticness and diversity of blooms will always be the treasure of the jungle. I drew my inspiration for “Reforestation” to reflect how a single tree can grow out of rigid concrete and transform into a tree that sustains a symbiotic cache of equatorial plants and blooms, rather than gold.