Artist’s Statement - J. Buelin

The botanical world is my studio companion, my subject, and my source. Whether I’m layering beeswax over pressed blooms, shaping clay into garden vessels, or printing fleeting foliage onto hand-dyed silk, I work in response to the ephemera of the natural world—its rhythms, its textures, its impermanence. My materials are often sourced from my own garden or apiary: flowers I’ve grown, wax from my hives, even the earth beneath my feet.

What began as a chance encounter with encaustic—its molten translucency and the ritual of the torch—has grown into a practice rooted in close observation, botanical collecting, and quiet alchemy. My work draws from the language of the garden, the aesthetics of natural history, and a reverence for the handmade. I’m as inspired by the structure of a seed pod as I am by the silhouette of a peony on sun-dyed paper.

I think of making as an act of preservation and of presence. In a single piece, I might capture the scent of beeswax, the memory of a golden hour walk in the forest, or the feeling of soil against skin. Each object becomes a trace—of the season, the plant, the hand, the moment.