PRESERVED GARDEN VESSEL & PRESERVED GARDEN MURAL
by Marten Herma Anderson
2026 Ceramic, metallic glaze
Marten Herma Anderson’s new works draw on memories of his grandmother’s garden on the German island of Rügen, exploring the enduring connections between people and the landscapes that shape them. The works began with a pressed flower that slipped from one of her books—a forgotten keepsake that quietly preserves memory. Through ceramic forms shaped by pressure, heat, and gravity, Anderson preserves botanical impressions and fragments of place, transforming personal memory into a reflection on nature’s ability to hold stories across generations.
Balancing organic forms with human-made order, these works explore the tension between growth and containment, permanence and transformation. Their iridescent surfaces evoke something both natural and otherworldly, suggesting that landscapes are not only physical environments but living archives of histories—human and beyond—quietly carried through time.
A love letter to his grandmother’s garden and the larger planet that holds it, Anderson’s works honor nature’s capacity to preserve memory, connection, and the countless stories embedded within the world around us.