ArtPlantae Today

Summer School for Artists, Naturalists and Educators

June 3, 2015 by Tania Marien

View Symposium schedule

Interested in learning more about the history of botany and botanical art?

A fantastic learning opportunity is coming to Southern California this summer that you don’t want to miss.

The eccentric beauty of the plant kingdom will be celebrated in a traveling exhibition of contemporary botanical illustrations and will be on view
June 13–Aug. 23, 2015 (Saturdays and Sundays only), at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. “Weird, Wild & Wonderful: The New York Botanical Garden Second Triennial Exhibition” is curated by the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA). The juried show includes 47 works, selected from a field of nearly 240 submissions, created by ASBA artists from Australia, Canada, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The show will be on view in the Flora-Legium of the Brody Botanical Center and is included with general admission to The Huntington.

“Botanical artists have traditionally depicted conventionally beautiful flora,” said Robert Hori, gardens cultural curator and program director at The Huntington. “This exhibition is meant to showcase nature’s oddities—plants of charismatic quirkiness that have a bizarre beauty all their own.”

In conjunction with the exhibition, The Huntington will co-host a symposium
July 23–26, 2015, offering a broad view of all that is weird, wild, and wonderful in the plant kingdom. The symposium is presented in partnership with the ASBA and the Botanical Artists Guild of Southern California (BAGSC, the local ASBA chapter). Learn about plants, explore the history of botany, take a botanical art class and learn about photography too. You can view the complete schedule on the Symposium website.

In addition to an exciting selection of classes, there will be special keynote presentations by botanists, artists and historians. The schedule of Symposium keynote lectures is as follows:

Do You ‘See’ Plants? Using Art and Technology to Teach Science

Painting the Wonder Plants of Borneo

The Art of Orchids

Orchid Digest

The Beauty of Ancient Plant Representations:
Weird or Wonderful?

From Field to Print: Botanical Art and Photography for Conifers Around the World and the Dendrological Atlas

An adjunct exhibition of approximately 60 works by local BAGSC members will be on view in the Brody Botanical Center Aug. 1–9. This supplemental show will extend the theme of weird and wonderful plants through educational outreach activities for children and families, demonstrations in different media, informal workshops, displays of botanical curiosities, and “Find Me in the Garden” links between the exhibitions and the botanical collections. During the week of this display, both exhibitions will be open to visitors daily (Wednesday through Monday) during public hours.

Summer school has never ever been this exciting!

Register Today

Posted in botanical art, Education, Learning Opportunities, Special Announcements, Special Events, Teaching & Learning |

Botanical artists using dry-brush technique

June 3, 2015 by Tania Marien

iStock_ColorfulPalette copy Dear Readers,

A fellow reader has asked an interesting question.

Increasingly dissatisfied with the wet-in-wet watercolor technique taught in traditional botanical art classes, this reader was wondering if there are any botanical artists who use dry-brush as their predominant technique.

Well aware that botanical artists often use dry-brush to put finishing details into their wet-n-washy paintings, this reader is asking for your help:

Can you recommend any botanical artists, working in watercolor, whose primary technique is dry brush applied in stippling, hatching, or both?

Let’s Chat
If you know of botanical artists or scientific illustrators who work in this way, please respond in the Comment box below. Thank you for your help!

Posted in Education | 18 Comments »

‘Medicine Illuminated’ now at Lloyd Library and Museum

June 3, 2015 by Tania Marien

Click image to view get a gallery guide.

Click image to view gallery guide on the website of the Association of Medical Illustrators.

Medicine Illuminated, the latest exhibition at the Lloyd Library and Museum, provides a rare look into a hidden part of the collections at the Lloyd. Rare texts about medical history and how medicine has been illustrated are now on view through July 31, 2015.

Rare texts on display date from 1546 and feature the work of Hippocrates and Galen and offer an overview of four centuries of medical developments and improvements. The art for Medicine Illuminated comes from the Lloyd’s Vesalius Trust Collection of Art in the Service of Science. This collection features works from notable 20th and 21st-century illustrators.

About the Lloyd Library and Museum
The Lloyd Library and Museum, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization, is a local and regional cultural treasure, which began in the 19th century as a research library for Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists, Inc., one of the leading pharmaceutical companies of the period. Our mission is to collect and maintain a library of botanical, medical, pharmaceutical, and scientific books and periodicals, and works of allied sciences that serve the scientific research community, as well as constituents of the public, through library services and programming that bring science, art, and history to life. For more information, visit the Lloyd website at www.lloydlibrary.org.

Posted in Special Announcements, Special Events |

Nurturing Community and Healthful Living in Riverside

May 29, 2015 by Tania Marien

Click flyer to download a GrowRIVERSIDE flyer. (printed in English & Spanish)

The second annual GrowRIVERSIDE conference is only two weeks away!

If you’ve been wanting to strengthen the local food and urban agriculture infrastructure in your community and don’t have a clue about how to begin, do not miss the second annual GrowRIVERSIDE conference. The conference will be held at the Riverside Convention Center, June 11-13, 2015.

At the inaugural conference last year, the City of Riverside was in the early stages of establishing relationships between local growers, the urban agriculture community, policy makers, investors and Riverside residents. Now one year later, the community-led Riverside Food Systems Alliance is in place and working to promote sustainable agriculture and an economically viable food system in Riverside and neighboring communities.

Attend GrowRiverside: The Future of Local Food (June 11-13, 2015) to learn more about this new Alliance and to network with growers, entrepreneurs, policy makers, investors, Riverside residents, and students pursuing careers in sustainable and start-up agriculture.

The conference program includes sessions about:

Developing Urban Farms that Benefit City and Community
Innovative Business Models to Support Local Food Marketing and Distribution
Exploring the Viability of Indoor Farming in Cities
Disruption and Technology in Urban Agriculture
Market Development for Beginning Farmers
Launching and Funding a Local Food Enterprise

View the complete program at GrowRiverside.com.

A free Community Farm Fest will be held on Saturday, June 13 in downtown Riverside near the weekly farmers market.
Many community workshops are planned. Workshops begin at 9:00 AM. The workshop schedule includes:

Grow Vegetables and Gardens Organically and Sustainably
Saving the Seasons: An Overview of Food Preservation
Innovative Water Devices: Subterranean Irrigation
Rainwater and Greywater Harvesting
Edible Landscaping
Hydroponics 101
Edible Weeds and Native Plants
Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet
Ask a Farmer: What is Community Supported Agriculture?

Click on the image above to download a Community Farm Fest flyer to share with family and friends. The flyer is printed in English and Spanish.

Eat locally grown food.
Support local growers.
Live a healthful lifestyle.

Register for GrowRIVERSIDE today!

Plants, Life, Riverside is an interpretive project about plants in an urban environment. Where are the plants in Riverside? Let’s find out.

Posted in Plants Everyday, Plants Life Riverside |

Journal about botany and art this summer

May 27, 2015 by Tania Marien

In 2011 botanists and botanical illustrators collaborated to create Botany & Art: Their Roles in Conservation, a special issue for the publication Smithsonian in the Classroom. While designed for school use, the usefulness of this issue extends far beyond the formal K-12 classroom. The information contained within this issue can also be used by informal science educators and parents leading their family on a summertime road trip.

This week we reach into the archives of the teaching and learning column. If keeping a nature journal is part of your summer plans, take a few moments to download the resources featured in this article.

Posted in Education, Teaching & Learning |

Study classical botanical art on the island of Kauai

May 27, 2015 by Tania Marien

Download PDF

The Art of Flowers
Princeville, HI
August 3-7, 2015
9 AM to 3 PM

A five-day botanical art workshop about the Renaissance techniques of the French Court Masters with Olivia Braida-Chiusano, founder and director of OM Art Designs and the Academy of Botanical Art in Sarasota, Florida.

This workshop will be held at the Princeville Community Center on the island of Kauai.

Designed for beginning to advanced artists, this insightful class in classical botanical art technique offers individual instruction and includes:

Slide presentation of “A Brief History of Botanical Art.”
Plant subject, paper supplies, pencils, erasers, syllabus, and handouts.
Daily refreshments
One complimentary group dinner during the study week.
A FREE copy of a botanical art publication by James White and Lugene Bruno, past and present curators at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University.

Participants wishing to paint their subjects must bring their own painting supplies.

Cost: $875 per person

Tuition does not include travel and hotel. Please contact The Academy for hotel information and for information about the Princeville area. Participants must to make their own hotel reservations.

Register Today

This information has been added to the “Classes Near You” sections for Hawaii and Florida.

Posted in botanical art, Education, Learning Opportunities, Special Announcements, travel |

‘Losing Paradise?’ in Stock

May 22, 2015 by Tania Marien

Botanical artists, some of whom had depicted only garden varieties of familiar flowers, set out to increase public awareness about plants threatened with extinction. They learned of the various organizations that assess the conservation status of endangered plant species such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network which produces the Red List of Threatened Species, NatureServe which produces conservation status assessments in the U.S. and Canada, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service which administers the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Artists formed collaborations with local scientists, conservation organizations, and botanical gardens that could provide guidance in locating and studying the plants whether they be in public collections or in the wild.