Flowers in Petri

Summary about the artwork 

The artwork Petri Flowers (a series of five petri dishes) is created using glass Petri dishes, two-component epoxy glue (epoxy resin and high molecular weight amine hardener), beads, and lava, metal and glass-ceramic decorative elements.

“Petri Flowers” have a symbolic meaning. “Petri Flowers” invites you to see the flowers – a symbol of love and peace – in Petri's dish and look for more humane ways to prevent covid when it comes to animal welfare and rights.

What inspired me to create the artwork? 

I like visiting art galleries, art exhibitions and reading about art. Though I personally can call myself an amateur painter and have gained skills in acrylic, tempera and oil painting, I admire the glassblower profession and feel the passion for sculpture and glass art-works. Once I have visited an art gallery where millefiori glass paperweight were exhibited. Artworks were so admirable, that the idea to create my own meaningful “paperweight” grabbed all my mind for a few days. This is how “Petri Flowers” were created.

The meaning of Petri Flowers 

“Petri Flowers” have a symbolic meaning. Scientists use Petri dishes (or other tools) to find organisms that are not visible for a naked eye, mostly to find pathogenic species and fight against them. In the human world, innocent animals, minks, suffered a double blow: in addition to being bred for luxury fur production, thousands of healthy animals were killed if at least a few covid cases were captured on rearing farms. The mink story during pandemic is just a part of all the worldwide situation when it comes to living creatures which must rely on a human decision (animals in zoos, other rearing farms, trade in live animals for food on markets, and pets).

How has creating this art transformed me?

My empathy towards animal suffer is limitless. I remember, right before the pandemic there was a period of unusually intense bushfires in Australia and I suffered and burned together with them there, and rose from the ashes next day. I realized and felt my helplessness while those forests were burning together with animals, birds, insects and Nature in general. The empathy experience like this takes enormous amount of energy out, and anytime I got known about animals‘ suffer, it took me a long way to recover and restart to live a life in my own physical body. The same feeling of helplessness and fear was waiting for me while reading news from governmental institution newsletters and social media about animals‘ suffers during pandemic. While working on my project „Petri Flowers“ I have immersed my thoughts about animal welfare in it. Now, when looking to these art Petri dishes, it heals my soul, as flowers which grow in Petri dish are the symbol of love and peace. It gives me a hope.

How do I want the art to transform others?

“Petri Flowers” have a symbolic meaning. Life is a mysterious experience where 99 percent of its manifestation depends on external factors which may help and nourish or destroy and abandon. The 1 (one) percent is given for hope and inner world to prosper.

It is natural and fully understandable that we, humans, look for our safety and welfare first. However, as due to the human’s brain complexity and the high level of its development, a human being is supposed to be an intelligent creature, uprising himself over other creatures and as a result, taking care of them when necessary, especially, if animals are already serve to people as a source of food, drugs and research. In parallel, we may also agree that anyone should not upraise himself over others, even if those are other creatures than humans, however, in the real world of XXI century it is still so...

The main goal of “Petri Flowers” project is to call for the more humane solutions when it comes to animal-covid cases. The hidden, indirect meaning of “Petri Flowers” is a call to realize that fear and inner feeling of helplessness only takes your power away, while finding YOUR way to transform it mentally into love and peace gives you the power and hope to make this world better. However, the better outside world starts from the healed inner world, and not vice versa.