UV: What were you thinking when you made this cover piece?
SH: This flower is one of 50. The ensemble is a garden. I wanted the "cute " aspect of them to become overwhelming and unbearable. Cute art is the enemy of thought. It's communication on a seductive level. Those very bright, large, non realist, beaded, furry and shiny vegetative elements put the viewer in a childish, internal, regressive, feminine environment. It's reasuring yet also worrying.

UV: Where would your ideal show be held?
SH: The ideal show would be held in the country and would propose a large quantity of performances involving site specific elements like snails, trees, picnic tables. I would work on it with my performer and dancer friends specialized in finding new ways to explore reality.

UV: Describe your relationship to your medium.
SH: Sewing, stuffing, cutting. The gestures that involved this project are traditionaly associated with femininity. The position for those gestures is hunched over, and I spent days in my studio without having to go out. The medium in this case is the final piece.

UV: How does your art relate to your environment?
SH: I built the garden because I live in an urban environment. The city lacks the organic structures I attempt to replicate. That project was about not having to reach out to anyone which is the opposite of my next project or previous pieces that are more anthropoligical.

UV: How does Bay Area culture influence your work?
SH: My next project is going to document ecological heroes. People that do amazing things on individual scales. I come from nihilist France and I would have never decided that without Berkeley so close.