Image by Mona Caron for Jersey City Mural Arts Program (JCMAP)
Don’t be surprised if you see a 20-story-tall flower blooming on a building in New Jersey.
The gigantic mural sprung to life in the city thanks to
Mona Caron, an artist who creates paintings of plant life for her ongoing
WEEDS series.
The project was commissioned by the
Jersey City Mural Arts Program (JCMAP), and depicts an Eutrochium—a plant native to that particular location in the country.
Image by Mona Caron for Jersey City Mural Arts Program (JCMAP)
The mural is a stark contrast to the industrial feel of the building it’s painted on, with the flower’s pink and green hues standing out among the brown and gray of the surrounding area.
“I’m calling the piece Shauquethqueat’s Eutrochium. It is not actually a weed but a wildflower native to this area,” Caron told
My Modern Met.
The San Francisco-based artist explained that the plant’s colloquial name—Joe Pye Weed—was in reference to a Native American healer from the 19th century, who is believed to have used the flower in phytotherapy. The healer’s Mohican name is transcribed as Shauquethqueat, leading to Caron’s unique name for the mural.
Image by Mona Caron for Jersey City Mural Arts Program (JCMAP)
“This anecdote works well with the questions I always like to raise with my
WEEDS series, regarding what belongs to the land and what doesn’t, who is invading and what is at home, in addition to thoughts about ways to overcome, to resist, to reconquer what has been lost and damaged through western human intervention,” said Caron.
Image by Mona Caron for Jersey City Mural Arts Program (JCMAP)
[via
My Modern Met, images by
Mona Caron for
Jersey City Mural Arts Program (JCMAP)]