Photo credit: Kristen Dettoni
Inspired by the aerial views of gardens, Painted Gardens transforms traditional garden plots into highly stylized compositions of color, texture, and pattern. Created with yarn rather than paint, each piece becomes a woven landscape where color fills the garden beds, and hidden messages take root.
The inspiration behind these works is the Rosicrucian Cipher, a symbolic code that uses a grid, much like a tic-tac-toe board, to represent letters through their placement and arrangement of dots. I reimagined this system as my own colorful cipher, using colored dots and uncut yarn loops as visual symbols.
Each piece begins with a color story and a phrase of no more than 16 letters, followed by the artwork's layout. From there, the process becomes more intuitive and spontaneous. As I fill the garden plots with yarn, color and pattern unfold, allowing the coded message to become part of the composition itself.
The hidden messages are written in Italian, a personal tribute to my grandfather, who was Italian and an extraordinary gardener. Through these works, I bring together family heritage, the language of symbolism, and a lifelong appreciation for the beauty and structure of gardens.
Part of my larger Secret Garden collection, Painted Gardens invites viewers to look closer, discover the unexpected, and find the stories hidden within each colorful landscape.
Discover Secret Garden
Explore Container Garden, Wildflower Garden, Painted Gardens, and the complete Secret Garden exhibition at the Jaffrey Civic Center in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
November 5 – December 19, 2026
Discover a world of contemporary fiber art where yarn becomes a medium for storytelling. Explore the textures, patterns, hidden messages, and personal histories woven throughout this collection of garden-inspired textile art.