On a warm and sun drenched afternoon in early May, we sat down with two independent artists we admire and are inspired by, Helen Prior and MG Vander Elst in conversation about their collaborative exhibition, Pieces Of Me.
Pieces of Me is on view and available for purchase at M.PATMOS through July 9th, 2025.
Helen Prior
M.PATMOS: So Helen, where is your studio?
Prior: My studio is in New Paltz, New York, which is in the Hudson Valley area.
M.PATMOS: So you’re surrounded by nature.
Prior: I am and I love that. It’s beautiful up there. I live in a town but you can step out and walk and you're in the nature preserve, and I love my garden, so I am always seeing just what’s on my doorstep.
Helen Prior's Studio in New Paltz, New York
M.PATMOS: You work in the realm of flowers, through imagery and in your environment. Reflecting on how flowers express the temporal nature of life and beauty, do you feel this idea influences your work?
Prior: Yes. I love flowers because they are exuberant. They are a big inspiration as I’m also a textile designer and flowers are often a big part of textiles, printing, and printed textiles, which is apparent in my vintage textile collection. Since early textiles, I love how there has always been a kind of stylization of flowers, which for me, takes the essence of a flower and makes it into something that’s about the blooming, the seeds, but it’s not done literally. It’s a play on it, and I love it.
MG Vander Elst
M.PATMOS: Since Helen mentioned the essence of a flower, MG, in your work as a photographer, are you capturing realism?
Vander Elst: Yes. I will surround myself with a certain grouping of flowers and I’ll watch them evolve from the pod, as with poppies for example, and I’ll just see what happens. I like to infuse them with my emotions as I am photographing them. [The flowers] are more representational of my moods or what I’m thinking of or what’s going on at that moment in time. It’s an emotional state. I am attracted to the imperfections and watch what happens as they start wilting, how beautiful that looks to me, how the colors change and how the withering holds beauty. My flower series are an iteration of what imperfection can be, the through line in my flower arrangements is to portray vulnerability.
M.PATMOS: Helen, do you also experience vulnerability working with clay?
Prior: Yes, you do have to give yourself over to the clay. It has its own feel and is basically earth. It’s a nice point of view when you are working with something that has come from the earth. I love layering the colors and textures. When you’re creating, you are in a vulnerable state. It’s like you are playing, but also trying to be sensitive and creative to create something interesting and new. I love combining nature and I am also using tools that are metal and wood, so I have some contradictions in my work. So, it’s play.
M.PATMOS: MG, I noticed a parallel to that idea in your work with collage, and the precision, cutting of paper and exactness of the positionality of your images. Can you speak on that?
Vander Elst: I have always loved collage and [draw inspiration] from David Hockney’s collages. My work [in this moment] is a lot of collage and has precision, like it’s a puzzle. In the collage I did for the exhibition, within the precision, I left pieces not completely glued, so there is air that moves within the frame. It gives a tactile feeling of what a flower is, [and reflects] the tactility of the petals.
MG Vander Elst's Studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn
M.PATMOS: Were you both familiar with each other's work before the exhibition?
Prior: No, and it’s been a great pleasure seeing MG’s work. It was inspiring to see [her] images and actually the Pieces of Me title came from MG. But I wanted to do something with that, so I used pieces. It was something I had in my mind for a long time, the way I was collaging clay, tearing and building on that. There is something about the title that really inspired me and the work, of course the photographs.
Vander Elst: No, but it has been a wonderful collaboration knowing that Helen’s work is also inspired by the natural world. I was amazed to find out how Helen’s textile work is informed by her floral ceramics. I have planned to visit her studio upstate next month, I can’t wait!
Shop the collection
To learn more about the work of Helen Prior and MG Vander Elst, please visit their websites:
Store photography by Jennifer Mason