This piece is part of "The Forgotten Garden," a series of invented flowers I created as a tribute to my mother, who is living with Alzheimer's Disease, and as an offering to the spaces memory no longer fills. As Alzheimer's robbed her of the names of flowers she tended throughout her life, this imagined blossom serves as a quiet guardian of the essence of a woman whose presence is still radiant even as her recollection fades. An experimental construction comprised of wheel thrown and hand built ceramic elements, this piece is a functional vase. Part of my artistic process in forming the piece was to create a vessel in a manner I had never before attempted, thrusting myself into the creative unknown to feel a small part of the uncertainty that my mother lives with in every moment now. The tenacity and joy she taught me to find in problem-solving served me well in this process and allowed our love and connection to continue to bloom-even in the face of forgetting.