Eileen Roscina: Say it with Flowers
November, 2025 - May 2026 @ Adams County
Wood, Plexiglass, Acrylic, Beads, Crystals, Hoops, Diffraction Grating Film, Hand Pressed Flowers
Location: Adams County Human Services Center
11860 N Pecos St, Suite 2200, Westminster, CO 80234
“The Carnation Gold Rush” is a term used by locals, historians and preservationists to represent the period between the 1880s and 1930s when the floriculture industry developed and thrived in Colorado, especially in Adams County. Dozens of family-owned greenhouses flourished which greatly impacted the local economy and, for a time, designated Colorado as the Carnation Capital of the World.
Roscina spent hundreds of hours harvesting by hand and nearly every plant in this installation was sourced from Adams County open spaces or purchased and cultivated from one of the few remaining greenhouses including Elaine T. Valente, Pelican Ponds, Riverdale Bluffs Open Spaces, Spano Greenhouse, Echter’s Nursery and Garden Center, Tagawa Gardens, and other unclaimed riparian areas. Using natural materials in her installation, Roscina addresses the tension of the domesticated versus the wild flower. What is lost when we remove plants from their natural environment — do they become out of context and communication with the rest of an ecosystem? What do we gain from our fleeting encounters with showy cut flowers as they inevitably decay? In the wild, plants live in a highly complex ecology and, being immobile, have to be incredibly creative in their adaptations. Plants use electrical impulses and chemical warning systems to communicate, transfer nutrients and water to each other, and even recognize and favor their own kin.
In the lobby of the Adams County Human Services Center, the powerful UV light shining through the windows will eventually bleach the flowers colorless. The hanging sculptures will diffract white sunlight and add color back into the installation. Roscina’s artwork not only deepens an appreciation for these light-eating cohabitants, but illuminates plant’s unique form of intelligence, agency and animacy.
Artist Biography
Eileen Roscina is an artist, experimental filmmaker and naturalist from Denver, Colorado. She earned a BFA from Emerson College in Boston, MA, is an MFA candidate at University of Colorado, Boulder and trained at the School of Botanical Art and Illustration in Denver. Through biomimicry and the study of biophilia, her work examines human’s spiritual and social (dis)connection with nature, and seeks to raise questions about realizing a radically different metaphoric mapping of time, space and our place in the world.
She has exhibited film internationally, and visual art at Denver Art Museum, MCA Denver, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder), Museo de Las Americas (Denver), Vicki Myhren Gallery at University of Denver (Denver), Center for Visual Art (Denver), Arvada Center (Arvada), Dairy Art Center (Boulder), University of Colorado (Boulder), Salina Art Center (Kansas) and was the 2019 Resident Artist for the National Western Stock Show, a 2018-2020 resident at RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Denver. She is represented by Walker Fine Art Gallery in Denver, CO.
Artist website: www.EileenRoscina.com
BMoCA at Adams County is a collaboration between the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and Adams County. Curated by BMoCA, this exhibition is an extension of the museum’s exhibition programming.