About the series

As the covid-19 pandemic hit, the whole world was forced into an uncomfortable state of unknowing. Our collective relationship with the unknown became increasingly clear as fear spread like wildfire, blame and finger-pointing ran rampant as we grasped for a fixed point of view, and a rush to the grocery store exploited a root chakra dysfunction.It is in that chaos of the unknown that I chose to sit, believing that there was something just beyond the horizon that was calling me. I sat like a seed in the fruitful darkness of winter, uncertain of how long I would sit or if my sitting would ever produce roots. Like the incoming and outgoing breath, I ocellated between trust and fear. All I knew was that I could not re-enter the life I was previously living.
After a year of sitting in the discomfort of not knowing, I chose to sell my house and move to my ancestral lands and paternal family farm in NE Iowa to try my hand at no-till gardening. Although I felt lost like a seed in the wind, it was clear that the universe was blowing me home. My house sold in a day and I followed my deep desire to feed people, be with family, and honor the land. My aunt’s comment about my decision to start a garden on our family land still resonates in my ears, “You’ll grow a lot more than food doing that.” And she was right.
During the spring of 2021, I helped move my maternal grandmother out of her home and into senior apartments. While cleaning out her garage, I found an old pack of mammoth sunflower seeds in my deceased grandfather’s workbench. I took them to plant in my garden as a way to honor him and his green thumb. Never having properly gardened before, I didn’t consider just how big these sunflowers would get. I put two seeds at the end of each bed around the garden. There are 16 beds.
Family members helped lay cardboard, deliver compost, create rows, install a fence, plant seedlings, mulch, water, weed, care for, and harvest in the garden. I was overjoyed to have the community participate, to give pounds and pounds of food away, and to provide educational moments for the children in my life. As the garden grew, so did the sunflowers, and so did my relationships. I had a true feeling of abundance, not in the monetary sense (which I needlessly worried about from time to time), but I felt abundance in the way our hearts deeply long for.
While working on my own garden, I also volunteered on a small established ethical and sustainable farm in the area. The stewards of the land are a young couple who I would identify as Soul Tribe; people I was meant to meet.  Early in my time working with them, I divulged that I brought my pottery wheel from California and hoped to create it over the summer. Their eyes lit up and offered me pottery equipment that they inherited from a ceramicist who closed up shop years prior. So, in return for putting my hands in the dirt and pulling weeds out of their crop beds, I was gifted all the pottery tools I needed to start my own studio. I was overjoyed! My loving parents helped me set up my new ceramic studio on the family farm and I began to create .I practiced and played in-between times in the garden and working on the farm. As my technique improved, the sunflowers got taller and taller.
Harvest season crept closer, and the sunflower stalks bent and swayed with the curve of an elder’s spine. Their strong stalks are like tree trunks at the base, supporting their 14’ height and heavy heads. The breeze bellowing them side to side, mimicking the tide of my mind between fear and trust in the unfolding of my life. I wanted to honor this season of growth. This season of opening, developing, trust, and creation. This season of digestion, nourishment, and dissolution. I wanted to honor the sacred land I was on, my ancestors, and the relationship I had with the unknown. So, I created the series, Sun Seed Ceramic Impressions.
Every seed has to sit and wait for the call to open. Some seeds wait years before they hear the call. But if you consider that mammoth sunflower seeds produce roughly 1000 seeds and each of those seeds comes from 1 initial seed, then you begin to realize the exponential potential of every seed. Although the seed has been handed down a genetic pattern that it may or may not realize, it also has its own destiny. Sitting in wait, rooted in mud, it senses its calling towards the sun. It is this fruitful darkness, this great unknown, this uncomfortable chaos that nourishes and sustains its journey. I wonder if a sunflower seed knows its destiny is to become a sunflower? As a child, does a little girl know she is meant to be a mother? When I was born did I know I was to become an artist? It’s a continual journey of becoming and welcoming the unknown over and over again. Encouraging the unfolding of one's own path without rushing to “figure it out,” solidify a point of view,  or blame others for the rocks under our feet. This series of sunflower impressions serve as my story and relationship with the unknown. They have the dust of my ancestors, my sweat in their form, and the wisdom of the great unknown potential that lives within all of us impressed upon them.
I hope that this sun seed ceramic impression serves as a deep remembrance of your own unfolding and the wisdom you carry within you. 
Thank you for supporting this work,

Sara Davis