Cornflowers

Somewhere between a Rocky Mountain meadow and a library shelf left open in the sun, these cornflowers found their ground. Laurie placed them here — bold and blue against a field of neon yellow and warm amber — the way she places all her beloved humble plants: with intention, with tenderness, and with the quiet insistence that the overlooked deserves to be seen. Cornflowers have always grown at the edges of things, along roadsides and forgotten fields. Here, they grow out of sheet music and dictionary definitions, out of a map that once guided someone through Texas and Oklahoma, out of a postage stamp that once carried someone's words across a distance. The word NEON sits at the bottom of the canvas like a title card or a secret code — and it is both. It names the color that vibrates beneath everything, the charged yellow-green that makes the blue flowers pop as if lit from within. But it also names something about the act of collage itself: the way Laurie's work takes the faded and the forgotten and runs electricity through it. A Kurt Vonnegut quote, partially visible, speaks of art as a mirror for the soul. A dragonfly, lightly sketched, pauses at the edge of flight. A squirrel watches from below, unhurried and wise. This is a piece that gives more each time you look. The viewer who lingers will find new fragments, new connections, new small moments tucked into the layers — the treasure hunt Laurie always promises, delivered in full color and full heart.