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Montana Jawbone

Montana in Spring, a weekend of friendship and generosity stretched as wide as the sky. I found it while walking—a jawbone, bleached to ivory, its teeth still lined up in a smile that outlasted the animal itself. By the end of the weekend, I’d assembled a small museum on our hosts’ table: vertebrae, ribs, antler sheds. “I sure hope you’re taking all these with you,” my host said. I laughed, imagining the look on airport security as my suitcase rattled with bones.

The Montana Jawbone pattern is what remains: Crisp lines repeating like cathedral arches, bonewhite geometry laid over storm-grey depths. At once precise and organic— proof that even in decay, there is design.

Final Flight

I never meant to catch a ghost, but one April morning in Seattle, a yellow-rumped warbler, having traveled thousands of miles from Central America, met its sudden, final stop against a window. I pressed the bird’s memory into indigo with the sunlight itself—on cyanotype paper found tucked away in my studio.

The resulting pattern was not planned. It revealed itself in mirrored wings and radiant echoes, like the bird was flying still, tessellated across the sky.

Green Leaf Insect Parade

Friday night, Seattle. I don’t know what other people do, but I was at home, hunched over a glowing screen, bidding on framed taxidermy insects in an online auction. The auction items each began at five dollars. A heartbeat. Then another bid. I waited, countered, hoped. In the end, I had won three framed sets, including this beauty. The next morning in SODO, a warehouse full of strangers gathered to claim their curiosities. We sized each other up, united by the peculiar thrill of victory, and I thought: Are these my people?

The Green Leaf Insect Parade is the echo of that night: rows of jade-green bodies marching in disciplined repetition, each insect both camouflage and revelation. A procession of illusions turned into pattern, order stitched from chance.

Butterfly XOXO

One summer afternoon, in the quiet of the garden, I found it—still, delicate, gone. A butterfly, its wings patterned in russet, white, and black. I set it down on a slab of old New England roofing slate to photograph. I flipped and stitched the image into hugs and kisses, spelled out by nature in a secret alphabet.

The Butterfly XOXO design carries that tender accident: repetition of wings into an embrace of pattern - geometry softened by grace. A reminder that affection can be found in the unlikeliest places— sometimes even in the hushed corners of a garden, where a butterfly leaves one last gift.

Evolution Wing

There, at The Evolution Store in NYC, behind glass cases of fossils and trays of beetles that glint like stained glass, I found them: a small envelope of butterfly wings, each more luminous than memory. The Evolution Wing pattern is equal parts specimen and spell. Wings turned into windows. A record of flight, now eternal. I carried them back to Seattle, a piece of wonder across a continent. Now, their geometry flutters again—stitched into a pattern where colors collide in impossible symmetry. A net of light and shadow, of wildness and restraint, reminding me that flight never really leaves us—it just changes shape.

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Patterns from Nature

Where Photography Becomes Surface Pattern Design

Montana Jawbone

Montana Jawbone

Montana Jawbone

Final Flight

Final Flight

Final Flight

Green Leaf Insect Parade

Green Leaf Insect Parade

Green Leaf Insect Parade

Butterfly XOXO

Butterfly XOXO

Butterfly XOXO

Evolution Wing

Evolution Wing

Evolution Wing

Claudia [Smith]

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