I grew up outside of Boston in a shingled house filled with Marimekko prints and potted plants—a Monstera deliciosa leaf tapped on my shoulder as I practiced piano. My father, a mild-mannered surgeon, tended his vegetable seedlings under grow lights on the ping-pong table in our basement.
Photographs by Margot Guralnick (@dogwalkdiary), unless noted.
Inspired by the ephemeral work of the great land artist Andy Goldsworthy, I started assembling my finds on accommodating surfaces of all sorts, from our neighbor’s cellar bulkhead doors to manhole covers and our kitchen table.
Enrique has been my loyal sidekick, no treats required for posing. Year-round, there’s never a shortage of material that astonishes me in the leafy corner of the Bronx where we live.
During the cold months, when I’m starved for color, I head to Wave Hill and the New York Botanical Garden, two great Bronx public gardens with greenhouses.
This sycamore-bark camouflage was an unexpected collaboration with the rain: I put it together in front of our house and the next day, after a rainstorm, was delighted to discover the evaporating dark outline and expired bumble bee that completed the piece.
I return home to Boston often, and on one of my visits, I gave this drain outside Harvard’s Loeb theater a temporary tattoo. I had Enrique with me, and as I worked, leash in one hand, matinee goers streamed out during intermission.
Photograph by Ted Conover.
An unstaged kitchen scene. We like to think of it as the oldest houseplant in America.