Corin Hewitt: Drying Flowers with Microwaves

Corin Hewitt’s exhibition Drying Flowers with Microwaves is at once a performance, installation and exhibition of photographs. The piece emphasizes that knowledge is a process, not an end, especially in fields like theater, performance art, photography, and genres of still life and craft. Such a philosophy extends to some of the most pressing issues – life, work death, time, and art.

In Drying Flowers with Microwaves, Hewitt will work in Dorsch Gallery to make a series of still life photographs of flower arrangements using microwave ovens to dry flowers. The arrangements combine seasonal flowers from Vermont and Florida, as well as other objects. Hewitt, who is originally from Vermont, makes this snowbird series live in the gallery over a two-week period, May 7-12 and May 14-19, 2010. Visitors see into a room within a room via the reflection of mirrors mounted above the space. The mirrors function as framing devices for the live action and reference the photographs being produced.

During the first weeks of the show, Hewitt busied himself with collecting specimens, drying and arranging them in the sequestered production area, and printing the photos that were eventually displayed on the gallery walls. The plant matter he manipulated to form the sculptures was collected in Vermont and Miami.