Jan Yager’s City Flora/City Flotsam series examines the urban landscape outside her studio in North Philadelphia. Beginning in 1990, Yager began to “beachcomb” the sidewalks returning with bullet casings, crack vials, and shattered auto glass from which she made conceptual jewelry. This Dandelion brooch, sets a fragment of auto glass like a gem at its center to represent the persistence of life in a decaying city environment. The brooch re-creates the dandelion, an unwelcome plant in formal gardens but a common, even charming presence in ordinary cityscapes. As an antidote to this disturbing evidence of poverty, violence, and drug abuse, Yager saw the resilient weeds as symbols of renewal and rebirth.

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