Maiden & Moonflower was created by Kiki Smith for an exhibition of her work at the Museum Haus Esters in Germany in 2008, and has since gone into commercial production. The scene depicts a star-filled sky, surrounding a woman standing beneath a tree bough. It addresses the spiritual and eternal aspects of human nature, and speaks of our solitary journey, all the while connected to nature.

Kiki Smith is a local artist, born in Germany, but active in New York for many years. Her body of work incorporates many different media including sculpture, printmaking, photography and drawing. Known more for her sculpture, printmaking has been of equal importance to Smith’s work. Much of her work focuses on the inner and outer workings of the human body, including fertility and other bodily functions, which have been portrayed in some of her earliest pieces. She later began looking outside the human body, exploring man’s relationship to the environment, and stars and stellar bodies became more prominent in her work. Feminine associations have been a long-running theme in her work, and she frequently incorporates photographic images of herself in the creation of prints or collages.

She began experimenting with screen-printing in the 1980s, and was drawn to its spontaneous nature and ease of use. Calling on her extensive experience as a screen-printer, Smith not only designed this pattern, but transferred the design onto the acetate necessary for making the screen, making the entire print a product of her own hand.

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