I Was Meant to Make a Garden of this Land

In-progress body of work | Salt Lake City, UT

We are all meant to make a garden of the land which we are given. Our garden is our legacy – it encompasses our family, religion, tradition and everything we are destined to be. With this garden, we also inherit the ability to continue the cycle of planting and harvesting, or we allow it to wither and die in seeking out a more suitable calling.

Adam and Eve were granted the Garden of Eden at the brink of all beginnings. This was the place in which the sun and the stars and the moon would exist only to sustain their life. However, to live in absolute peace meant no pain, and thus, no joy. Despite the insurmountable resources given to live an eternal and celestial life, the pair found that the polarizing and thrilling experience of mortality warranted enough joy to surpass any sorrow that followed. Therefore, Adam and Eve abandoned their Garden of Eden.

I am someone who chose not to make a garden of the land I was given at birth – and neither were my pioneer ancestors who traveled from Europe and across the American plains to settle in Salt Lake City. Although my ancestors and I have taken pilgrimages in opposite directions, I have found a common thread in our religious pursuits – how we have both come to know pain and have both come to know joy in searching for something greater than ourselves.