Laura Cooper
Opuntia
2001-2015

Large Opuntia Works

Small Opuntia Works

Cooper collaborates with the peripheral fragments of plants that accumulate in her garden. Paddle cactus, Opuntia ficus indica, has grown in her hillside garden for generations as food and as a spiny hedge. This cactus reduces to a coral-like skeleton once it’s succulent, edible flesh falls away. It transforms from three dimensions to two in the process, becoming, as it peels off in elongated oval sheets, a kind of “found drawing.” These desiccated forms are worked and re-worked, connecting pieces together, giving them new shape and meaning.