Eden

Maggie West’s art sits at the intersection of documentation and fantasy. For Coachella, she has created one of the world’s largest 3-D photography installations, reproducing her floral photographs on 20 steel structures, each covered with wood and vinyl, ranging from 6 to 56 feet tall.

To create Eden, the Los Angeles–based artist photographed a variety of plants, each in two color schemes: warm (a combination of peach, gold, white, or pink) and cool (shades of blue, teal, indigo and lavender). She uses lighting, not Photoshop, to color her photographs.

Color is an essential component in West’s work. “I love to capture elements of the natural world within artificial environments,” she says. “Color is a powerful piece of our perception of the world. By photographing familiar objects with multicolored lights, my work helps viewers look closer at some of the nature they might take for granted.”

While Eden’s colors and lighting draw attention, the massive scale heightens its effect. “By enlarging the photos to this size,” she says, “you can see the intricate details like the texture of the snake plants and the stamens in the centers of the lilies.” 

The high-resolution images appear on vinyl sheets, the warm palette on one side of each sculpture and the cool palette on the other.

After dark, the sculpture comes alive with mapped projections onto the sculptures that create a vibrant light show that adds an extra colorful dimension to these already vibrant images. 

While Eden is West’s largest project to date, she has a history of working with the natural world. She recently completed an artist residency at California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and has mounted many large-scale digital art installations depicting plants, minerals, and other natural specimens.

For Coachella, she has created an immersive world for the festivalgoers. “I love the idea of bringing my images off the computer and into this massive, surrealistic landscape. I’ve finally created the mythical garden of my dreams!”