Cedar Lake
This piece is a personal homage to Cedar Lake, where my grandfather built a remote Maine camp that’s been in our family for generations. I grew up wandering its shores—learning the rhythm of the woods and the stillness of the water.
The botanicals were foraged on a quiet late-summer visit: wild grasses, lakeside blooms, and forest-edge foliage. With sun-faded greens, soft neutrals, and delicate textures, this collection reflects the serenity of that sacred place—and the legacy that remains rooted, even as everything else changes.
Filters
Cedar Lake Collection – Full Story
Video
story & process
a closer look at the creation of cedar lake
This piece was created from plants and flowers gathered at my family’s camp on Cedar Lake in northern Maine — a place woven into my memory and history.
Built by my grandfather, “Pappa,” when my mother was a young girl, the camp was one of the first in that area. Materials were hauled by boat and snowmobile, long before roads reached the shoreline. My mother remembers carrying bricks for the fireplace he built by hand. Pappa was a true Mainer — a mill engineer, a gifted woodworker, and a man with a huge heart. I still remember the scent of sawdust and cigarettes that clung to him like a signature. This work is a quiet homage to him: a green-toned, nearly monochromatic collage that echoes the land he loved and the place we were lucky to call home.
But Cedar Lake wasn’t just his. It was shaped by my grandmother, too.
Known to us as “Nanny,” she had a creative spirit and a strong sense of how things should be. She chose the original camp design from a Sears catalog — a detail that still makes me smile — and helped shape the space into a lived-in family retreat. She was a skilled cook, having learned from the Italian women in Millinocket’s “Little Italy” after marrying into an immigrant family. She painted, wove baskets by hand, and loved a good game of cards. Many of her baskets are still in use today — sturdy, beautiful, and built to last.
When I returned to Cedar Lake for the final time, I carried with me a few familiar tools: Nanny’s handwoven basket, a journal, and the quiet intention to collect—not just plants, but a feeling. I wandered the woods and shoreline, noticing textures and light the way I did as a child. Goldenrod swayed in the breeze. Ferns unfurled at the base of old trees. Small blooms I’d walked past a hundred times suddenly felt like keepsakes.
I began pressing specimens right away—between the pages of books, tucked inside my journal, or carefully laid out back at the camp. I turned the kitchen table into a temporary studio, surrounded by the scent of pine and the soft sounds of lake water just outside. The process was as meditative as ever, but this time, it carried more weight. I wasn’t just preserving plants—I was preserving a place, a season, and a piece of my family’s story.
Back in the studio, each botanical that was pressed by hand had dried over several weeks. The final composition came together slowly. I wanted to echo the quiet softness of the landscape, the layered history of the camp, and the subtle ways memory weaves itself into the land. The result is a piece that feels timeless and grounded, almost like a living archive of a place that shaped me.
Cedar Lake isn’t just a collage—it’s a farewell, a thank you, and a gesture of remembrance. For Pappa. For Nanny. For the generations before me who built something lasting, with their hands and with their hearts.
newsletter sign up