Poetic Botany:

Artists and Plants

March 1 – April 23, 2021

Jenine Sheros Leaves, human hair, 2011, photo by Robert Dimante.

In response to COVID-19, we continue to make adjustments to reduce in person visits to the gallery. This temporary visitor policy means that this exhibit will be limited to the Suffolk community by appointment. To maintain a safe environment, only four visitors will be allowed in the gallery at a time. All visitors will be required to wear a mask and practice social distancing. We look forward to the time when this temporary policy will no longer be needed.

We have created additional ways of experiencing the exhibit. We are excited to share this with you. Please visit the exhibit website for a virtual tour and related links!

The greatest flower artists have been those who have found beauty in truth; who have understood plants scientifically, but who have yet seen and described them with the eye and hand of the artist.  Wilfrid Blunt, The Flower Artist in The Art of Botanical Illustration, 1950.

There has long been a strong relationship between plants, the scientists who study them and the artists who visualize and draw them. During the Age of Discovery, (early 15th century to early 17th century), when botanical illustrators accompanied plant hunters, botanical illustration became a way of making a record of what a plant looked like. This enabled the scientists working in botanical gardens to make sense of the dried specimens of plants being brought back from overseas expeditions. Watercolor studies of the plants were made on board ship, and were painted to indicate color and morphology.

This exhibit takes a look at the way this group of contemporary artists working in a variety of ways, express their passion and interest in botany, which expands their own fascination with florae. Their work brings into focus the importance and the imperative of sustaining the living planet. The earlier artists were part of a great moment of discovery. Their ‘progeny’, both artists and scientists, task themselves as stewards of what literally nourishes us all.

This pursuit is reflexive, that is, the study of plants is a way of understanding our own species and helps to understand what we need to do to sustain the planet for all species. What we see and observe (this is in regards to plants as well as many other fields) is the key to knowledge and paying attention to that knowledge. Of interest in the current moment is the relationship of gardening and the importance of plants in times of crisis and also the notion of plant blindness.

Beth Galston’s project Leaf Prints 2017-2019 is part of an ongoing series of large-scale inkjet prints of decayed leaves. She thinks of them as “portraits.” The leaves are scanned at a high resolution and printed at a larger-than- person-size scale. Most of the leaves are 82” tall x 58” wide, creating a visceral experience that draws the viewer into the image.  She is fascinated with the process of decay and how it reveals the unique inner structure of each leaf. By collecting the leaves and bringing them indoors, she is stopping the process of decay, then capturing the moment through the scanning process. We often stop looking at things we think we know well — an oak leaf, for example. By encountering the leaves at an enlarged scale and looking closely, they can be seen in new ways.

Ann Wessmann’s objects and installations explore themes relating to time, memory, beauty and the ephemeral. Wessmann develops works through repetition and the accumulation of a variety of materials. Materials are chosen for their expressive potential; translucent vellum, various personal mementos such as locks of hair from family members, texts from family journals and letters, and for Poetic Botany, natural materials such as plants of many kind. The works have a strong relationship to text and textiles, pattern, transformation, order and chaos, landscape and the body.

Jenine Sheros
In Leaf Series, the intricacies of a leaf’s veining are recreated by wrapping, stitching, and knotting together strands of human hair. She states that she was “Inspired by the delicate and detailed venation of a leaf, I began stitching individual strands of hair by hand into a water- soluble backing material. At each point where one strand of hair intersected another, I stitched a tiny knot, so that when the backing was dissolved, the entire piece was able to hold its form.” The complex network of lines present in this work mimics the organic patterns found in nature and speaks to the natural systems of transformation, growth and decay. Allusions to the vascular tissue of plants, as well as the vascular system of the human body, exist simultaneously. In the works presented as photographs here, the installations for Ephemeral Garden were completed during an artist residency at La Maison Verte in Marnay-sur-Seine, France.

In her recent series Adaptation, which she began as a  Scholar-in-Residence at the Tufts European Center in Talloires, France, Michelle Samour creates drawings based on direct observation of the interior and exterior structures of plants. Drawn with a quill pen to reference early natural history illustration, Samour visually interprets how these plants are changing and have the potential for extinction due to climate change. The organic is overlaid and interchangeable with the technological in these hybrid drawings that question how global warming causes plants and animals to adapt and what that might look like.

Participating Artists:

Beth Galston

Ann Wessmann

Jenine Shereos

Michelle Samour