Unexpected Flowers grew out of my experience as a permaculture gardener wrestling with the enormity and urgency of climate change. Our world is shifting rapidly and it’s hard not to feel sadness and anxiety over the new shape of things. These new challenges demand that we grow ourselves, feed our imaginations, and expand our ways of thinking about how to live creatively and sustainably with our ecologies and technologies.

Working in collaboration with artificial intelligence text-to-image diffusion models was a way for me to visually explore the worlds we might create if we play in the dirt as well as the laboratory. What could we do if we get excited about plants and animals and insects and fungi and air and water AND engineered nanomaterials and ultra-efficient fuel cells? What would that world look like? Can we sequester carbon in high fashion? How can we better understand the intelligences of plants to enjoy fuller social, intellectual, and emotional worlds? Can we make beautifully engineered nanomaterials that are safe and sustainable by design? What beauty might bloom on exoplanets or in the deep future?

Unexpected Flowers grew in the landscape of these questions. I decided I wanted this collection of works to feel like a meditation and a gift: like the moment you walk into the garden and see one of your favorite plants is in bloom. Or when you’re having a hard time and a friend shows up at your door with flowers. It’s in that moment - those unexpected flowers - that we are transported into new realities where our future can be a gift that we co-create together.

Unexpected Flowers was on view at the 2022 Autumn Lights Festival in Oakland, CA.

Lauren DeSteno is an artist, game designer, and gardener in Oakland, CA, USA.