Suzanne

Suzanne Havens is a mixed media artist who lives on the Gulf Coast of southwest Florida.

New Year’s Cactus Blooms

 Inspiration  No Responses »
Jan 092022
 

My maternal grandmother’s sister gave this cactus to her in the mid 1930s. My grandmother gave this cactus to me in 1981. It has moved with us from Michigan to Atlanta to New York back to Georgia and now to Florida. I have pruned and propagated it many times to share its beauty. I used to call it my Christmas cactus, but now I have a different species that blooms at Christmas and this one blooms later, so I have renamed it my New Year’s cactus. This is the first bloom of the season. Rather than a side view, I decided to make the photos lying on my back looking up towards the sun to see inside and through the petals. I played with the backgrounds to give it a variety of moods.

Looking up to the sun

A bluer cast

A darker background

An imaginary background

Blurring the green leaves

Into the center with a dark background

Into the center with an imagined background

Memorial for 9/11

 Memorial  No Responses »
Sep 112021
 

On September 20, 2015 I paid my respects at 9/11 ground zero for the second time. The first time was in November of 2001. So much had changed. Instead of rubble surrounded by fencing and personal memorials, there was a museum and waterfalls into pools on the footprint of the twin towers with names inscribed of those who died in the buildings and the first responders. There was a sculpture that looked like bird wings and a new tower. Many visitors quietly walked the site, paying respects, grieving.

I created these montages as my memorial. Can you see the ghosts? I call it Freedom Rising. Many years earlier I worked for American Express and went through or by the World Trade Towers on my way to work at the Financial Center. During the first underground attack of the World Trade Center I was working for Genlyte in Secaucus, New Jersey and could see the plumes of smoke from my office window.

I have great difficulty in understanding the hatred that motivates humans to hurt and kill one another, again and again and again. But I know that we must not be defeated by hatred. This is why I call my memorial Freedom Rising. We do not forget, but we use it as a way to contrast our love, optimism, and courage to build again, to soar like the phoenix from the ashes, and thank those who give of themselves to protect our freedom.

Freedom Rising

the waterfall and pool

The new tower cast in blue

The new sculpture

The museum, waterfall and pool, and visitors paying their respects

Floral Portraits

 Marie Selby Botanical Gardens  No Responses »
Aug 262021
 

As a volunteer photographer for the botany department of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, I have the privilege of being able to pose the plants in front of a black drape, light them and make a series of photos. Some of these are single images. Some are “focus stacked,” with multiple images made and then stacked by focal area in Photoshop. If the flower moves at all during the multiple shots, strange abstracts emerge. I enjoy them, but it is details that the botanists need. I keyword them and then they are added to a worldwide data base for botanists, who compare and contrast by family, genus and species. I have included one of the “ruler shots” to show the size of bloom.

Apocynaeae, Hoya kanyakumariana, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Apocynaeae, Hoya kanyakumariana, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Zingiberaceae, Globba winitii, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Zingiberaceae, Globba winitii, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Zingiberaceae, Globba winitii, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Orchidaceae, Phalaenopsis pantherina, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (from Malaysia)

Orchidaceae, Phalaenopsis pantherina, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (from Malaysia)

Orchidaceae, Phalaenopsis pantherina, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (from Malaysia)

Orchidaceae, Eria Hyacinthoides, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Orchidaceae, Eria Hyacinthoides, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

First Place in Geometry Category

 Inspiration  No Responses »
Aug 232021
 

My photo,Circle of Life, won first place in the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens 41st annual photo exhibition. You can see all the photos in the link below.

Bromeliaceae, Tillandsia streptophylla

https://selbygardensvirtualphotoexhibition.artcall.org/pages/web-gallery

Great Blue Heron Series

 Inspiration  No Responses »
Jun 092021
 

A great blue heron visits the ponds behind our house. I made this series of photos during golden hour. The colors of the feathers are really beautiful. The backgrounds were not all beautiful, so I tried to make them so with painting and other photos.

“Monet Goes POP” at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida

 Inspiration  No Responses »
Feb 272021
 

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is featuring a pop artist’s take on Monet’s paintings. Roy Lichtenstein created large collages of Monet inspired themes, the haystacks and the waterlilies. As a pop artist, Lichtenstein used contemporary devises, like the dots used to turn drawings into print. He oversized the dots so they became a signature part of his work/play. The blue/green is the iconic Monet color of his house and garden hardscape.

Along side Sarasota Bay flower boxes support the arches of newly planted flowers and vines, which will mature as the exhibit goes on.

Monet’s garden at Giverny features arbors in this iconic blue/green. The Selby staff interpreted this in the Lichtenstein style of wisteria and gate posts with dots.


Bridges in the iconic Monet color are repeating elements at Giverny and Selby. Water lilies are fashioned in the pop Lichtenstein style.

The facade of Monet’s house with its blue/green shutters acts as a backdrop in Selby’s tropical conservatory. Lichtenstein’s pop elements are the hashmarks on the windows and the pink dots on white to represent the pink stucco on Monet’s house.

The conservatory features many brightly colored orchids instead of the annuals and perennials that grow in France. The Lichtenstein/Monet gate serves as a fresh backdrop.

Just as the bridges are repeated elements at Giverny, they are seen throughout Selby. This time in traverses the koi pond where Lichtenstein inspired waterlilies and koi decorate the pond.

Lichtenstein made a pop version of Monet’s haystacks. Monet painted the haystacks at different times of day. Lichtenstein painted different color versions: red, yellow and blue. The Selby staff created one set of haystacks that display yellow from the right and red from the left using wood on the diagonal–another modern art treatment. Long grass was planted in front to express the hay field.

Lichtenstein’s original artworks of the waterlilies and haystacks are being shown in the Payne mansion, a part of the gardens.

Monet created paint boxes in his garden filled with plants and flowers of similar hues to test out the the harmony of the colors. Selby built paint box gardens with a larger than life tube of red paint and a yellow paint brush loaded with green paint, reminiscent of the larger than life pop sculptural objects of Claes Oldenburg.

Tallinn

 2018 Europe  No Responses »
Feb 032021
 

We visited the beautiful capital of Estonia, Tallinn, in 2018 with buildings dating back to the 13th century. Although we visited in mid-day, I chose this image to imagine what it might look like in the evening.

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