An entire life cycle can be observed and documented in a garden, reminding us of our own lives, of our own fascinating but short time here on earth. This view of life from beginning to end condensed into a single season isn’t possible to observe in a human life, so we must go to the garden to participate. In this collection of photos I want to reveal my own intimate view of the beauty of color, the details of texture, the sculptural form of a plant, all followed by striking, inevitable decay.

CURRENT EVENTS   My work will be displayed in a December show called Integrated : spiritual survival at Collectively Grasp Environmental Art Gallery, 850 Greenwich Street, SF. Aileen Meehan and I have curated my photos and the show will be up and viewable on 11th December, 2008. Opening reception will be Saturday, December 13th from 6 to 9pm. Hope you can make it!

A selection of my photos will hang at Artemis Healing Center in Los Altos, CA, from December 5th, 2008, until early March 2009.

I have been busy learning about the business of art from a wonderful Art Business Counselor named Martha Zlatar who works through the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) here in San Francisco. She is fun and inspiring and I've learned a lot about focusing on my goals without judging them. It's a challenge to optimize the artistic brain and inspire it to think in business-like ways, and to blend art and life so that both are lively and enjoyable simultaneously - a difficult task when one wants to make pictures and not money! (this only applies when one is not able to make money directly from the activity of choice - the art moves me, money is a by-product of the art).

FUTURE EVENTS  May and June 2009 will find my work hanging in the St. Francis Foundation's Chenson Memorial Gallery at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco. More details to come.

ART HISTORY   Loren Simpelo graciously lent me his display window to showcase my photography for my Open Studio at Simple Design with the red door, 1254 Mason Street, San Francisco (between Washington & Jackson across from the Cable Car Museum), October 25th & 26th, 2008. October's Open Studios had a new group of artists linked by the North Beach Art Walk, with all art, poetry and musical endeavors mapped by the Telegraph Hill Dwellers Arts & Culture Committee. The pairing of local business owners and artists was to foment even more artistic activity in the neighborhood. It was the best time I'd had in a long time with Kim Frohsin's Sidewalk Sale going on next door and Candace Loheed at New Orangeland keeping me happy with the Proseco!

"Serenity III " was up until October 21st at UCSF Center for Reproductive Health at 2356 Sutter Street, SF. Matt McKinley of McKinley Art Solutions curated the show. My work was displayed on the 3rd floor in the 'J' hallway with more art on 7. The building itself has a beautiful California-style interior garden and the entrance hall is lined with tactile and colorful tiles imprinted with live botanicals and inscribed with poetry or thoughts on loved ones who have been ill. I enjoyed these as much as the art show upstairs.

"Spines", with nine out of twelve images never exhibited before, was hanging at the Chameleon Café on Russian Hill for two months, August through October, 2008. The laptop crowd regularly faced away from the art, but the beautiful spiny images behind them looked just great on the gray wall, like a French café. Thank you, Melody, for the opportunity.

I participated in Vesuvio's Special Edition of Art in the Alley for their 60th Anniversary on Sunday, October 5th, 2008. The weekend was full of musical and poetical events, and the day I was there had many local North Beach artists sharing space with a variety of musicians and audience.

Sunday, September 21st, found me at the Fort Mason Community Garden's Garden Gala. I showed and sold my matted photos of the garden, and donated to the silent auction. The food was great, especially the champagne, in such an incredible setting, the garden lush and beautiful this time of year! I spent an afternoon last week shooting dahlias and roses and lavender there, plus my usual close-ups of the unusual parts of plants that most people never notice.

My friend, Dana, graciously donated a space surrounded by garden for an Open Studio in October 2007 here in North Beach. I enjoyed the visits by friends and a few new faces, including someone living next door who said, "I take pictures similar to these." I smiled, thinking what he really meant was a once-a-year vacation photo shoot at the park with the family surrounded by flowers, but when I was formally introduced to Sid Hollister at his solo show at Canessa Gallery a month later, I saw that he really DID take pictures similar to mine! It forged an instant connection.

My solo show at The Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture at the San Francisco Botanical Garden in July, August and September 2006, was wonderful and I enjoyed everyone I worked with there through the entire process. I truly felt like a talented artist with the lovely responses I received from everyone who viewed the show!  JaycoxSFBGpage

My botanical photos were first exhibited at Vesuvio's on Columbus Avenue in June 2005 (thank you, Conrado), and I have shown a variety of photographic images in venues around the U.S. and Europe, including group shows at The San Francisco Women's Art Gallery, MASS MoCA, and Light Impressions Corporation gallery in Rochester, NY.

HISTORY I was born here in California, and moved back in 1997 where camellias, magnolias and iris bloom in the wintertime, and where my photography and I have thrived. I grow my own cacti and succulents on my roof because of their beauty and because of their skill at surviving my occasional neglect.

TECHNICAL I photograph using a Contax RX 35mm camera with Fuji PRO160 print film, natural lighting (fog is a wonderful light filter) and no tripod. My images are printed straight from the negative without cropping, the way I see them through the viewfinder. They aren't altered digitally in any way.The scans used on this web site are lovingly 'hand' scanned from my own negatives by yours truly.

 

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and,
through her, God. ~Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
(April 1861, to Parker Pillsbury)