It’s February, and things are feeling rather low and grey. But when I look at Mitch Eckert’s ​‘Annals of Glass Houses’, I receive a flood of warmth and color. The images also generate for me a surprisingly strong empathic resonance with plants. Eckert roams around greenhouses getting to know the leafy residents. He finds something small but worthy of consideration in the places where the plants touch the glass.

Plants at the glass border are trapped, but thriving. They reach towards the light and the outdoors. Many would likely perish in the winter, but they continue to flourish inside, where they are cared for and coddled.

I allow myself to inhabit the emotional space Eckert has presented here. I find parallels between these plant houses and domestic life and parenting, where we grow nicely until we hit the ceiling or a wall. Eckert’s plants make me feel a living desire — to keep sprouting, to explore what lies beyond the confines of daily life. At the same time, viewing the warmth from the outside makes me stop to appreciate our heated homes, and the humans nestled inside those homes who feed and water and cultivate one another.

A Glass House is a place for intense scrutiny. But these views into greenhouse windows are fogged, or scummed with the residue of former plants. Leaves have suffered when they came to greet the window, sticking to the barrier or blackened by the contact. A warning, perhaps?

These quiet, pretty pictures are full of tension for me. They sit on the border wall between the harsh elements and nurturing comfort, between the blazing unprotected sun and the prudence of filtered light, between exploratory freedom and the security of care.

- Lisa Woodward

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