FIVE: a sensory garden
May 26 – June 19, 2011
SPARK gallery, Denver, CO
Botanical artist, Susan Rubin, will share her contemporary view of botanical art in an exhibition about plants, people, and the five senses.
As Susan explains in her statement for FIVE:
In an ongoing exploration of the relationship between people and plants, this group of drawings takes a closer look at the five senses and the way we experience our environment.
As babies, we touch and taste everything we see. As adults, we respond immediately to familiar sensations and make fast judgments based on past sensory experiences. Senses trigger one another. Just read the word “rose” and you can smell it. See a lemon and pucker up.
Smell is the sense most linked to memory. A whiff of Grandma’s perfume, the first Spring lilacs, or the charred scent of a campfire will snap you back in history faster than any photograph or story.
Beautiful, delicious, fragrant plants engage our senses, but it is not their job. It is coincidence that the sensory input of plants affects us at all. Their scents and colors and tastes are all geared toward one thing: species survival – theirs, not ours.
Textures and colors calibrate absorption of light and moisture; scent and markings attract pollinators; flavor and sound are related to ripening, decay and dehydration, which lead to dispersal of seeds and start the whole cycle again.
We are happy bystanders to botany, connected by our five senses.
View a gallery of Susan’s work online at Susan Rubin Studio.
ArtPlantae Today 