Cherry Archer is a Vancouver based artist. She studied photography at Focal Point, Vancouver and fashion design at Sheridan College, Oakville, Ontario. She is know for her botanical ice tile photography. Her art is strongly influenced by ecopsychology, a field which fosters ecological thinking and documents how exposure to nature benefits mental, physical, and emotional well being.

Botanical Ice Tile Photography

Cherry is a gardener and an avid forager. Her process begins by snipping plants she grows in her garden or with a long forest or urban walk to forage botanicals. She composes, then incrementally freezes the vegetation in water to form what she calls Botanical Ice Tiles. The tiles are illuminated with coloured light, then photographed over several sessions. During each session Cherry experiments with changing light colour combinations and the varying frost patterns which form on the tile surface each time it exits the freezer. Between shoots Cherry often  refines the composition with additional plant matter and  texturizes the ice surface by  adding water with misters and droppers. Aesthetically her work is influenced by the skies, the delicate detailing, and the curvaceous lines of rococo era paintings. The images are abstract.  They are developed large enough to reveal the minute details of air bubbles, frost crystals, plant textures, and the occasionally accidentally trapped insect. 

On a macro scale, shooting the Botanical Ice Tile series is an analogy for global warming. On a micro scale, the series explores tensions between randomness and control, transience and preservation, and reality versus abstraction.