Installations

My installations are site-responsive explorations of place, material, and presence. Working with botanical pigments and gathered materials, I create immersive environments that invite a slower way of seeing and experiencing the natural world. Each work emerges through a relationship with its surroundings—an exchange between land, material, maker, and viewer.

Ephemeral Bloom

Botanical Ink installation - Arboretum 2026, made possible by ArtX

Ephemeral Bloom: Weathered by Time is a collaborative installation by artist Jill Sans and botanical consultant and storyteller Kate Watters—an offering shaped through months of tending, gathering, and listening to the land. Since October, this work has unfolded across multiple landscapes, from time spent at Wild Heart Farm in Rimrock, to foraging and cultivating plants throughout northern Arizona and the greater Southwest. The materials themselves carry stories—sourced from gardens, farms, and wild places then infused into inks that form the foundation of each piece.

The installation is composed of six canvas panels, each exploring a distinct element of the plant world: root, leaf, petal, seed, fruit, and water—a sentient source that connects them all. Each panel is also a conversation with place, reflecting the surrounding landscape of the Arboretum and beyond: the mountain, greenhouse, meadow, wash, aspen grove, and cultivated garden. Together, they form a layered narrative of relationship—between plant and person, land and body, time and transformation.

Created with botanical inks, hand stitching, and intentional openings within the canvas, these works invite a deeper way of seeing. Small windows punctuate the surfaces, framing the living landscape beyond and drawing it into the piece—reminding us that the artwork does not exist separately from its environment, but within it. Threads move across each panel like pathways or root systems, binding image and text, gesture and meaning.

Interwoven into the work is the poetic voice of Kate Watters. Her writing is fully stitched into each panel, with fragments also handwritten in black walnut ink—an homage to traditional ink-making practices and the enduring relationship between humans and plants as vessels of expression and record. The words offer reflection, invitation, and pause—guiding viewers into a more intimate connection with the ephemeral nature of both plant life and their own lived experience.

Installed in a circular walking path, the work is meant to be encountered slowly, as a journey rather than a single moment. Visitors are invited to move from panel to panel, tracing connections, noticing shifts inside and out, and allowing the experience to unfold over time.

Beginning in late April and continuing through October, the installation is intentionally exposed to the elements. Sun, wind, rain, and time also become collaborators in the work. The pigments will fade, the surfaces will shift, and the pieces will weather—mirroring the very cycles of change they speak to. The experience of the artwork in spring will not be the same in summer or fall.

This evolving nature creates an open invitation to return—to witness change, to notice what has softened or disappeared, and to reflect on how we, too, are shaped by the environments we move through. Ephemeral Bloom: Weathered by Time is both a visual and ecological experience—one that asks us to slow down, to observe, and to remember our place within the living world.

Interwoven

Botanical Ink Installation - Coconino Center for the Arts | April 2026

Interwoven is a remembering.

A reflection of our deep entanglement with the living world that holds us. Through working in relationship with plants, I am guided by seasons, cycles, and the quiet resilience of life—how it persists, adapts, and thrives, even in the cracks. In a world filled with noise, Interwoven asks us to slow down and notice what we pass each day: the medicine, the nourishment, the beauty that asks for nothing and gives so much.

Creating with only what is available and needed, I work in reciprocity with the earth, leaving little harmful trace—honoring the life within the materials themselves. These works carry breath, color, and vitality, woven from the same threads that bind plants, animals, and humans together. Interwoven is an invitation to feel that connection in the body, to recognize the sacred relationship we share with the natural world, and to remember how deeply we belong to it.

Botanical Inks and Mineral Pigments on Canvas

Inks including: Hibiscus, Yellow Onion Skin, Marigold, Pomegranate Flowers,
Indigo, Avocado Pits. Mineral pigments including: Malachite and Gold Mica
Hand-Stitching details

Interwoven is a living tapestry created with plant-based inks—each color grown, gathered, and transformed by hand, carrying the imprint of place, care, and time. This work speaks to our inherent connection with the Earth and to the quiet resilience of beauty created through all seasons of the human experience.

Process Notes

This section holds work that is actively unfolding. Interwoven and Ephemeral Bloom reflect ongoing questions around connection, impermanence, and growth, shaped by process and time. These pieces remain open, guided by material, intuition, and attentive making.