Mallory Marty Coffey

We lived in south Jersey for a few short years and it was such a dream. Tall pines. Sparkling lakes. Gardens galore. It was there that our daughter took her first steps, we fell in love with the water, pinelands, the historical downtown, and nights out by the fire pit. It was also while there that my husband got deployed overseas, then covid hit two weeks later. Through those hard times, finding beautiful details in nature became crucial. I needed to find the silver lining in anything, no matter how small it might be. I found it by noticing the snowdrops popping up first, still surrounded by snow, or how beautifully the water trickles through a fountain or creek. During that dark time, I collected flowers and pressed them and am now using them in my artwork to add texture and meaning.

I happened upon a beautiful pressed flower book from, I think, the 1950’s. Immediate purchase. Mostly unused, it was going to be a place to document my pressed flowers and the special memories of where we were living. The pages of the book are black and in between each page, are the sweetest, most delicate layers of glassine with an embossed spiderweb design.

I started the book with a colored pencil drawing of a fountain my daughter and I loved and walked by MANY times. The colored pencil really pops off of the black paper and is the reason I’m starting a love for working on black or toned papers.

From there I combined drawings with pressed flowers from our neighborhood. First up is this little bun bun paired with lily of the valley collected from a corner of the yard. We had a bunny family that lived on our property. My daughter loved those bunnies. She still loves bunnies. In fact, at our new home we also have a bunny family and she tells people that she has pets, that they’re wild, but still hers.

My daughter loves bunnies but I love lightning bugs, and I wanted to do a page that would represent sitting out at dusk on a summer night, fireflies twinkling among the wild flowers. I used an iridescent shimmer powder to try and create a glow-y effect on the circles that are meant to look like fireflies captured by a long exposure photograph, leaving a little glowing trails of spots as they travel and flash.

Right past Donkey’s (my goodness I miss those cheesesteaks), was a local nursery that had the most amazing waterfall and koi fish pond, where you could feed the fish, which my daughter did many a time. This was a favorite spot of ours.

We lived near a wildlife rehabilitation center and there was a crow who learned to say “Hi” and “Hello,” which would always surprise and delight visitors. I think my little three year old daughter jumped a foot in the air the first time she heard it talk. Next to the crow, I have a snapdragon that I gathered from the cracks of our driveway, and I’ve placed it in such a way that it is “growing” out of the seam of the pages. I had grown some in our corner garden, and I didn’t think those were perennials, but the next year this lil guy grew from the cracks. I like to see it as “beauty can come from anywhere.” Persevere and thrive wherever you may be. I told my daughter that after we had to move away from that beautiful place. We might be somewhere new, but we can thrive here, too.

Another favorite place that I wanted to represent was Grounds For Sculpture, a magnificent sculpture park and gardens. Peacocks would roam freely on the grounds and was a lovely surprise the first time we saw them. We got so lucky as to pass by someone that worked there and cared for the peacocks and he let my daughter feed one. That was pretty special.