Hand-made Prints: Sky Garden series, 2019-2022
In my hand-made botanical prints, I present medicinal plants in various compositions. The visual elements and stars in the Sky Garden series are from the Herbal, a 12th-century Andalusian botanical manuscript, and Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo’s 17th-century treatise. Inspired by the manuscripts’ original images, I digitally draw stars, and botanical and animal silhouettes, and then prepare stencils of them for silkscreen and monotype printing processes. Some of the prints have over fifty layers of printing combined with washes of ink or watercolor to impart the idea of tangled plants in a garden.
Digital Illustrations: Endemic Healing and Vivid Garden series, 2020-2022
Both series include digital illustrations of healing plants that I research. Some illustrations are printed on aluminum medallions of various sizes and shapes to evoke Persian decorative tiles of traditional fountains and structures inside the historic botanical gardens in Shiraz, Iran (where my family originates).
The Endemic Healing series features medicinal plants with healing properties that include treating stress, respiratory issues, sore throat, or fever. The works symbolically posit the path to recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. They can be printed on any substrate.
Public Art Pieces
Selected Commissioned Public Art pieces, in San José, Davis, and Stanford University, 2017-2022.
Research & Inspiration
The Institute Archives & Special Collections
MIT, Cambridge, MA, 2018 & Botanical Gardens