Elder Flowers
On view at:
Happy Warrior Playground (Amsterdam Avenue and 98th Street)
from September 1 - December 1, 2025
Elder Flowers, by artist j. maya luz, presents striking color prints of flowers captured past their “prime.” Using the natural process of decomposition, these intricate images invite reflection on maturation, wisdom, and mortality. Beautiful and contemplative, they echo the elegance of 19th- and 20th-century master photographs while remaining distinctly contemporary in style and technique.
One featured work, Tulip, portrays a flower stripped of most of its petals. Yet, in this transformation, the remaining petals take on intensified color, inviting viewers to expand their notion of beauty and consider how strength and character emerge through change and loss.
j. maya luz, artist-in-residence at El Taller Latino Americano, has photographed many of the notable musicians and artists who have performed and exhibited there. Her work has been shown in New York and abroad. In 2005, her series Dar a Luz / Bring to Light was selected to represent the Pan American Health Organization’s campaign Make Every Mother and Child Count. Her 2018 book God Space documents churches in Mexico. In 2021, she received a grant to create a large-scale installation in Anibal Aviles Playground, Good Neighbors, honoring Corp. Aviles and the Manhattan Valley community.
Walk with the exhibition:
Elder Flowers began unexpectedly—an impulsive response to the deepening colors of wilting daffodils on my kitchen table. Caught in the glow of pre-spring sunlight, they lit up from behind like stained glass, their fading petals radiating a quiet intensity. I wondered how they might translate to paper. Could the curling edges, the exposed veins, the softened decay reveal something new—not just about flowers, but about color, time, and transformation? Could they, in their decline, mirror something of our own human life-cycle?
This series became an exploration of those questions.
Flowers have long been studied, drawn, and photographed—botanical subjects revered for centuries. Yet one image remains lodged in my mind: Breadfruit by Charles Scowen, taken in 1880. I first saw it decades ago, and its presence still lingers—a beautiful document, both record and memory. Despite its age, it could easily pass as a sepia-toned Instagram post from today. Scowen captured it during his time in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he established a photography studio. His images, now housed in historical collections around the world, possess a remarkable timelessness, transcending the limitations of his era’s technology.
Those daffodils brought Scowen’s work rushing back to me—along with a flood of historical botanical illustrations: the delicate lines of Dioscorides’ Iris (1563), B. Delachénaye’s precise studies (1811), Theodor Dorsten’s detailed renderings (1540), and Garcia de Orta’s vibrant flora (1567). Each image, like a pressed flower in a book, holds the tension between documentation and reverence.
Flowers, to many, are beauty incarnate. They engage nearly every sense—their color, fragrance, delicacy, structure. The softness of petals, the tension in a stem, the crispness of leaves. In this series, I invite the viewer to linger with them when form loosens and essence intensifies. There, perhaps, is another kind of story that deserves to be explored.
The images:
Lily, is not one of the first image I made for this series, even though it is the first one you will find in Happy Warrior Playground. After I had made many images, I began to think about the paintings and watercolors of the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who made many famous botanical paintings. I made this lily, part of a bouquet given to a dear friend for her 50th birthday, when it was considered too wilted to be on display. Its folds and fibers are graceful notes moving up along the line of the page. The whites are warm hues, verging on peach and orange. There are no sharp edges, only soft waves, framed by the blue reminiscent of a twilit sky.
Georgia O’Keefe: Red Poppy, 1928
2. Mountain Laurel is another later experiment with forms and technology. This is a constructed flower made by layering parts of flowers to make a “digital bouquet”. The flower was from the home of a dear friend, who was selling their home after many years. The construction was made as a kind of honoring of the place and memories - with all its love and imperfections.
3. Tulip was one of the first images made for this project; the image I learned the most from making it. It revealed the poetry within, with its petals missing, the saturation of colors, the curling of its tips. It is the one most like stained-glass Tiffany windows. Because of its open front, it allows you to look inside it. It has nothing to hide. What beautiful strengthening metaphors.
4. Rhododendron was a tricky flower to make. It is woody and thick and doesn’t have the same glassine quality as it withers. It is fibrous; it is hard to get light through. But those greens and magentas, are deep, beautiful colors.
5. An iris given to me from a local garden on the Upper West Side. I made many iris images. I chose this one for the way the petals seem like delicate fingers that touch each other gently, forming a yogic mudra (hand positions that help the flow of life-energy). The purples move into blue hues; the yellows darken into mustard and orange.
6. Dogwood isn’t an “elder” flower per se because it hasn’t aged yet. It is another kind of experiment and another homage to watercolors and the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe. An exploration of colors: pink and green. And an exploration of using the page to create a composition: the petals bounce the eye along the whole of the page.
7. This Gerbera Daisy, something sold at every bodega in NYC, is like a wild yellow sun.
8. Azaleas taken from my childhood home before it was sold. They are a tangle of memories, and time. It is another experiment with a constructed bouquet.
9. Lilac has lost its scent and what was once blue has sifted to violet and black. It reminds me of the Nina Simone song “Lilac Wine”
”I made wine from the lilac tree
Put my heart in its recipe
It makes me see what I want to see
And be what I want to be”
10. The exhibition ends as it began, with an homage to Georgia O’Keefe, and a Red Poppy - that was given during a Hispanic Heritage month event at Gracie Mansion during the Bloomberg administration. Deep tones of red, yellow and black are back-lit to show the layers, like petticoats, of petals.
This Grady Alexis Gallery exhibition is supported in partnership with the NYC Parks Department and the Columbus-Amsterdam BID, as well as through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with the City Council. Additional funding comes from the Jacob and Ruth Epstein Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and individual donations.
We Thank You!
El Taller Latino Americano (aka The Latin American Workshop, Inc) is 501(c)(3) community-based institution in New York City.
Since 1979, El Taller has been an open space for expression and dialogue inspired by the belief that creativity dispels fear and mistrust among communities.