Penny Ann is a freelance botanical artist.

My work examines the materials we consume, discard, and overlook, treating them as records of human behavior rather than remnants of use. I work primarily with natural and post-consumer materials—plant matter, food skins, eggshells—not to aestheticize sustainability, but to document the quiet systems of extraction, use, and decay that structure daily life.

Each piece begins after utility ends. The materials I collect have already fulfilled their purpose; what remains is evidence. Through a process of cutting, sorting, and reassembling, I reduce these remnants into measured fragments, removing narrative excess and allowing structure to surface. The resulting compositions function as both archive and abstraction—ordered, restrained, and intentionally unresolved.

Time is central to the work. Organic materials shift, fade, and resist permanence, challenging the expectation that art should exist outside of entropy. Rather than preserving materials indefinitely, I allow their instability to remain present, making decay a collaborator rather than a failure. In this way, the work reflects broader environmental systems: cycles that continue regardless of human intention.

These pieces are not statements of solution or optimism. They are acknowledgments—of consumption, of impermanence, of responsibility. By isolating and re-contextualizing what is typically discarded, the work asks viewers to consider not only what we value, but what we choose to ignore, and what traces we leave behind.