“Castles Made of Sand” is one of Jimi Hendrix’s more biographical songs, portraying his uncertain and transitional childhood. Each verse contains separate descriptions of universal disappointments, the sentiment being that all will change.The concept was to create a portrait of the Hendrix family, using an ephemeral medium. The front image uses flora to make up the bones, while the inside case shows the original photograph, with Hendrix at the centre of it. I wanted the “secret” of who the portrait was, to be encased within the record; the photograph held directly below the flora image. 

The flowers, cut in their prime, are doomed to shrivel and act as a metaphor for human relationships,  impossible to preserve. I had to work against time to create the portraits to capture the flower’s beauty at its peak - that moment before the bruise overtakes the perfect, velvet petal.The song was written in December 1967, as the summer of love faded into winter. I used flowers in a more modern way and as a nod to this period.