The use of white is intentional in Never In Lieu of Flowers. Like a single note held in a minor key, it deepens the connection to the meaning of the work. While color, lights, and the use of resin, in the Deconstructed Botanicals, extend the language. Much of the joy of flowers is witnessing their life span. A tulip, for example, brings us hope as it pushes from the earth, continues to grow and extend its beauty after it is cut and even the faded fall of petals reminds of the passage of time.

Ginnie Peterson constructs the Never in Lieu of Flowers and Deconstructed Botanicals sculptures from plaster, natural materials, stoneware, resin, steel and lights. For the white series, Peterson formulates mixes with Hydrocal (white gypsum cement) or plaster and liquid polymers to coat objects. She also makes many of her own containers from stoneware. In the later work Ginnie builds on steel armatures that she has welded for this series. She makes silicone molds from actual flowers and leaves then casts them with pigmented resin. She amasses materials then works intuitively, selecting from an inventory of materials, paying attention to shapes and relationships, conscious of how the cast of light affects the pieces or how the added light moves.

Both Never in Lieu of Flowers and Deconstructed Botanicals are concerned with mortality, time, and potential, both lived and lost. The sculptures embrace the magnitude of the moment and reflect an awareness of our limited time on earth. The flowers, captured at their peak, grieve their own demise. They show us how much energy it takes to reach our potential, and how quickly we fade. As still lives, they evoke ghosts, statues. You cannot talk about life, they say, without talking about death. Where are you on the continuum? How do you measure?