I wanted the tension between industrial labor and botanical delicacy — a woman whose inheritance isn't money or land but the obligation to receive beauty that won't stop offering itself. The Tlingit-Piedmontese fusion gave me something unexpected: two cultures with deep traditions of preservation meeting in a cellar that's half alpine cantina, half clan house. The coat-dress with its specimen pockets transforms her body into a walking archive, but the genuine warmth in her expression insists this isn't servitude. She's amused by the absurdity, present to the comedy of being chosen by flowers. The dripping aster stem grounds us in the now — this is today's bloom, and tomorrow there will be more. — Lux