I've Trampled a Million Pretty Flowers
1995
47 x 21 in. (119.4 x 53.3 cm)
Judith Schaechter
American
Object Type:
Glass
Medium and Support:
Stained-glass panel
Credit Line:
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with funds contributed by The Women's Committee and the Craft Show Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995
Accession Number:
EX2020.DG1.9
During the 1990s, the artist was in a band and writing music as well as making her stained glass. A song would sometimes inspire the creation of a panel, as happened here, or vice versa. Despite the joy music gave her and the important role it continues to play in her life, ultimately Schaechter gave up making music to focus entirely on stained glass.
Here, large, fleshy flowers are strewn across the black-and-white grid of this panel. I've Trampled a Million Pretty Flowers is one of the earliest works to highlight the imaginative flora that will come to populate much of Schaechter’s stained-glass universe. These “pretty” flowers are both beautiful and disquieting. In the 1980s, scientists had begun, in earnest, to develop genetically modified plants. By 1994, the year before this piece was made, the first commercially available GMO plant, a tomato, was approved for consumption by the FDA.