The discovery of acetone flowers

Something amazing happened to me today. I was searching through Darwin’s texts and I found a block print plate of a group of flowers. I wanted to include them in some sort of artwork for our project… After nearly mutilating the book with copy machines and scanners the very simple, and haunting result was this-



It isn’t a finished piece of artwork by any means, but in the strangest way it- like this book- is the shadow of something real. It is entirely unique, having passed from the literal flower to the mind of Darwin, to the hands of the print maker and under the scrutiny of the publisher, and then one hundred and fifty years after the small treatise was written on this flower I revived its shadow on a piece of parchment paper. I resurrected it as an after thought to a new text. Is not this story the same thing? Something real that has existed far longer than you or I have, embellished with curiosity and then infused with artistry? Isn’t that what we are seeking to accomplish by writing this story to begin with? Are we not attempting through a rather simple and childlike plotline working our hardest to resurrect the shadows of a long forgotten history and a dull biology? We in that regard, are like the image of the flower.