About the Artist

Tanzanight was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. Tanzanight received a BA in Integrative Studies, combining Art, Botany, and Environmental Studies, from Warren Wilson College, in Asheville, North Carolina, and a BFA in Painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio. Tanzanight has held employment positions in botanical gardens, production gardens and greenhouses, the wholesale floral industry, floral design, and event decor production. This cumulative botanical experience drives the content and inquiry in her creative practice as a painter, focusing on ethnobotany and plant anatomical structures, working in oil on canvas, and water-based media on paper. She has exhibited in galleries, institutions of higher education, a perfumery boutique, a dance theater, gardens, and project spaces in Ohio, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, California, and Oregon.

Artist Statement

Ethnobotany is a prominent focus in my artwork, not just with regards to economical uses and sustenance, but emotive responses: how humans may associate memories and internal feelings with specific botanicals, due to their past experiences, projections, and desires. I consider botanical symbolism, and the traditional cross-cultural acts of using flora for celebratory occasions, and leaving botanical offerings for the deceased, the divine, the spirit world, at sacred sites, shrines, burial grounds, and death locations. I also reflect on our human perspective of time with relevance to the landscape, in contrast with time in geological duration.

I perceive the natural, non human-made world as one continual, immersive, dynamic art installation that forever intrigues me, offering meaningful insight for interpreting life’s complexities and progressions. My artwork intends to focus awareness on the plants’ exemplifications of cyclicality, continuity, and anciently-rooted magnanimity.