Joy Broom

This portfolio represents selected works in an ongoing series of Trees and Clusters. My work has a long history of layering elements of the natural world: insects, seeds, veins, trees, cells. Beyond realms of pure science, this has evolved into a kind of expanded phantasmagorial personal biology. It has become my own history, combining my pencil and ballpoint pen drawings with bits and pieces of old family letters and photographs, in a particular shape of insect hive clusters.

The work combines for me the beauty of biology with the order of icons and altarpieces. I use purified natural beeswax as a skin, to conceptually bind, protect and ritualize. There is no specific intent to nod towards organized religion, but certainly I find in these references a veiled spirituality.

I've combined actual antique British glass specimen slides with branches with hints to circulatory systems; my drawings reflect old biological medical illustrations. It is my intent that this work has wider historical implications--out of the strictly personal--as well as reflecting a broader natural universe.