16” x 21” fine art print on Hahnemuhle rag paper. Edition of 15.

Scraps of Pyropia spp. Pyropia can be dusky green, almost black or vibrantly purple, like these scraps of dancing nori. No matter what outward colour, they are in the red category of seaweed, and their complex life cycle was teased out by British phycologist, Kathleen Drew-Baker. Drew-Baker had noticed with intrigue the fall bloom of Porphyra, locally known as laver. She focused her attention on this alga and what she initially supposed was a different species, the filamentous algae Conchocelis that grew as splotches of red or purple in old oyster shells. Her great discovery was that these two were not different species but different life stages of the same one. The familiar Porphyra in the local (UK) laverbread and what the Japanese press into sheets of nori were but one stage of an alternating generational cycle. Drew-Baker wrote up her observations and a simple description of the two stages of Porphyra’s life history.