ArtPlantae Today

UCR Botanic Gardens Hosts Poster Contest

February 12, 2015 by Tania Marien

Download entry form

Riverside residents have the wonderful opportunity to study a diverse collection of plants without leaving town. A few weeks ago we learned about the UCR Botanic Gardens. If you haven’t visited the Garden yet, here’s incentive to do so. The UC Riverside Botanic Gardens is having its annual Primavera Poster Contest. Local artists are invited to submit photographs and other artwork about the Garden for consideration. Artists can submit original artwork to two categories: 1) Photography and 2) Other Media.

This contest is open to all artists. The Garden’s only stipulation is that the art must be of the UCR Botanic Gardens and be no smaller than 11″ x 14″. First-place winners will have their winning work featured in this year’s Primavera poster.

Primavera is the UCR Botanic Garden’s annual fundraising event featuring food from local restaurants, wine from local wineries, beer from local breweries and art from local artists. First-place winners of the poster contest will each receive four tickets to Primavera in the Gardens. Second place winners will each receive two tickets to the event.

Visit the UCR Botanic Gardens and capture the beauty of Riverside’s hidden garden.

Are you a regular visitor to the Garden? Have you taken a show-stopping photograph of a plant or landscape scene in the Garden?
Do you have a drawing or a painting of a plant in the UCRBG collection of which you are especially proud? Download the entry form and submit your original artwork to the Primavera Poster Contest. Submissions are due March 6, 2015.

View Guidelines, Entry Form

Posted in Plants Everyday, Plants Life Riverside |

Shirley Sherwood Collection of Botanical Art at Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery

February 12, 2015 by Tania Marien

© Beverly Allen, all rights reserved
Born Sydney, Australia, 1945 . Doryantes excelsa (Gymea Lily), Watercolour on Arches paper ,
39 x 28 ins (99 x 71 cm)

The Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery invites you to view new works in the Shirley Sherwood Collection.

Botanical art has for centuries been closely linked to exploration, travel, and adventure, aiding and inspiring scientists in their quest to understand the natural world. The best botanical artists have always combined technical skill in producing a faithful likeness of a specimen with their own artistic flair.

The Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery is delighted to host an exhibition of new works by 18 outstanding contemporary artists in Work from Botanical Artists in the Collection of Dr. Shirley Sherwood: Celebrating 25 Years of the Collection. This exhibition will be on view April 23 – May 30, 2015. All works are for sale.

Interested in plants and art since childhood, Dr. Sherwood earned her undergraduate degree in botany from Oxford University and her D.Phil working in a team which discovered the important drug Tagamet.

She started the Shirley Sherwood Collection in 1990, and it now includes 900 paintings and drawings, representing the work of over 240 contemporary artists from 30 countries around the world. Alongside curating exhibitions of works from her collection specially hung for the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, she has exhibited her collection in many other prestigious locations including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Marciana Library in Venice and the Real Jardín Botánico Madrid. She has also written six books and many articles on botanical art.

The Sherwood family have all generously supported Kew with the building of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, the only purpose-designed botanical art gallery in the world. The gallery opened in April 2008, and has between 2 – 3,000 visitors a week. Awarded the OBE for services to botanical art in early 2012, Dr. Sherwood is a Fellow of the Linnaean Society, was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society and is an Hon. Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford.

Artists participating in this exhibition are: Beverley Allen, Francesca Anderson, Phansakdi Chakkapak, Annie Hughes, Ingrid Finnan, Monika de Vries Gohlke, Coral Guest, Mieko Ishikawa, Rachel Pedder-Smith, Kate Nessler, Brian Poole, Jenny Phillips, Rosie Sanders, Jessica Tcherepine, Carol Woodin, Fiona Strickland, Susan Ogilvy, Susannah Blaxhill.

The Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery is open Monday – Friday (10:00 am – 6:30 pm) and Saturday (11:00 am – 4:00 pm). Admission is free.

Celebrate 25 Years of the Shirley Sherwood Collection!

Visit Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery

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

UCR Botanic Gardens Invites Local Artists

February 12, 2015 by Tania Marien

Download guidelines, entry form

The UCR Botanic Gardens invites local artists to take part in the annual Primavera in the Gardens Poster Art Contest.

The artwork of the two first-place winners will be used as the artwork for Primavera. First-place winners will each receive four tickets to this annual food, wine and art event. Second-place artists will each receive two tickets to the event.

Original artwork will be accepted for two categories: 1) Photography and
2) Other Media. This contest is open to all artists. The only stipulation is that all original artwork must be of the UCR Botanic Gardens and be no smaller than 11″ x 14″.

Did you take a show-stopping photograph of a plant or landscape scene from inside the Garden? Do you have a drawing or painting of a plant in the UCRBG collection of which you are especially proud?

Download the entry form and submit your original artwork to the Primavera Poster Contest. Submissions are due March 6, 2015.

Download Guidelines & Entry Form

Posted in botanical art, Education, Photography, Plants, Special Announcements, Special Events |

Botanical Painting Workshops at Jeanne Debons Studio

February 10, 2015 by Tania Marien

Botanical painting workshops will be taught at Jeanne Debons’ studio in February and March.

Now at Classes Near You > Oregon:

Jeanne Debons Studio
www.jeannedebons.com
Botanist and botanical illustrator, Jeanne Debons, teaches small student-focused painting workshops at her Oregon studio. Dr. Debons received her Ph.D. in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University. She graduated from the diploma course in Botanical Painting at the English Gardening School in 2005.

Botanical Painting Workshops

Upcoming Workshops:

Jeanne Debons Studio, Bend, OR
February 21-22, 2015 and March 21-22, 2015

Sunriver Nature Center, Sunriver, OR
Botanical Painting – June 13-14, 2015
Discovering Color – September 12-13, 2015

Cost: $65 per day or $120 for 2 days
Materials will be provided

Posted in botanical art, Education, Learning Opportunities |

And you thought wilting flowers were bad…

February 6, 2015 by Tania Marien

Cut flowers wilt before your eyes.
Slender plants bend in the wind.
Leaves sag when a branch is cut off a plant or when a plant is removed from soil.

There is no way to avoid these scenarios. Change is inevitable.
How to get comfortable with all this change?

How can you teach students they can adapt to change?

Consider this five-minute exercise created by art educator, Sarah Grow.
Grow describes this simple activity in The Not-So-Still Life, a one-page article published in SchoolArts magazine.

Grow developed her activity after reading Ten Lessons the Arts Teach by Elliot Eisner and modeled it after Lesson #4 which states:

Learning in the arts requires the ability and willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

To teach this lesson in her classroom, Grow creates a still life using a bowl, apples, an artichoke, a potato and a container of mints. She then informs her students they have five minutes to draw the arrangement she has set before them.

When students are one-minute into their drawing, Grow takes a bite out of an apple and moves the potato. At Minute 2, she takes another bite out of an apple and switches the position of the mints and the artichoke. At Minute 3 and Minute 4, she changes things even more. At Minute 5, her student’s drawings are complete.

While Grow’s students might think she is a bit out of her mind at Minute 1, they catch on to what she is doing, surrender to the unanticipated changes and deal with the problems they encounter, each in their own unique way.

Grow created this activity for middle school students. It is available online for free.

Literature Cited

SchoolArts

http://www.davisart.com/Promotions/SchoolArts/PDF/11_10-middle-school-studio-art-lesson-not-so-still-life.pdf

Posted in Teaching & Learning, teaching and learning |

Discover Fiji with Margaret Best

February 6, 2015 by Tania Marien

Join Margaret on the island of Fiji!

The information below has been posted to Margaret’s main listing at
Classes Near You > Canada and on the new page for Fiji.

Margaret Best
www.bestbotanical.com
Margaret Best is an award-winning artist and respected teacher. Her artwork has been shown in many exhibitions about contemporary botanical art and is featured in the book, Today’s Botanical Artists, by Cora Marcus and Libby Kyer. Margaret teaches in Canada, England, Bermuda, Italy, Morocco, Fiji, South Africa and the United States. Her work is held in both public and private collections, including the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Margaret teaches both watercolor and colored pencil.

Botanical Art Workshop with Margaret Best

Learn botanical art in the morning and take part in afternoon excursions to experience Fijian culture. This seven-day botanical art holiday will be based at Daku Resort and includes plenty of time for relaxing and painting at your own pace.

Visit local shops, villages and an organic herb garden. Explore Flora Tropica Botanical Gardens, learn about palms and coconuts and experience Fijian culture.

Program Includes:

 Return airport transfers from Savusavu to Daku Resort. 
7 nights accommodation at Daku Resort in traditional bures with private facilities 
Breakfasts, lunches and dinners
 Workshop fees
Lectures and excursions as indicated

Program Excludes  Travel:

Comprehensive Travel Insurance
 Optional activities not listed on the program
 Costs of a personal nature such as laundry, massages, private trips
 Meals taken in transit at the airport

Cost:
$1,700 US (single room)
$1500 US (twin share room)
$830 US (non-painting partner)

Travel Information:
Fiji Airways flies directly to Fiji from Los Angeles and Vancouver.

View Photos & Itinerary

About Fiji
The Republic of Fiji is a country in the island region of Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean. Explore this part of the world below:

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

Philadelphia Society of Botanical Illustrators at Philadelphia Flower Show

February 4, 2015 by Tania Marien

By Philadelphia Society of Botanical Illustrators

The booth of the Philadelphia Society of Botanical Illustrators (PSBI) at the Philadelphia Flower Show (February 28 – March 8, 2015) will feature an exhibition of more than 35 precise paintings and on-going demonstrations about how botanical paintings are created. Demonstrations will be held daily from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm. Both the exhibition and the demonstrations are by the 75 local members of the PSBI.

“At the Show, we try to portray the glory of nature both accurately and attractively. We take seriously the quote from Keats of ‘Beauty in truth, truth in beauty.’”, says Judy Simon, Exhibition Chairperson.

The title of the PSBI exhibition is “Holly, Wood and Vines,” reflecting the flower show’s theme “Celebrate the Movies.” The Philadelphia Flower Show will open with “Lights, Camera, BLOOM!”. The PSBI exhibition will complement the opening event with glitzy gold and silver frames. The artwork in this year’s exhibition have names such as “Up Close and Personal” (for an enlarged specimen), “Bad Actor” (for an invasive plant), or “Blonde Bombshell” (for a yellow dahlia or tea rose).

The exhibition will feature only original artwork. Society artists spend many hours, weeks, and even months creating each piece. They take great care to make certain their depiction of the plant, flower, fruit or vegetable is faithful to nature, as well as being a thing of beauty, something to be passed down with pride to future generations.

Founded in 1997, the Philadelphia Society of Botanical Illustrators have participated in the flower show since 1998.

Public demonstrations are part of the PSBI mission to educate the public about the intricacies of botanical art. It is an art form that is a tradition, particularly in the Philadelphia area where John and William Bartram founded and illustrated North America’s first botanical garden in the 18th century.

For more information, check the PSBI website (PSBI-art.org), Twitter (@PSBI_artists) or contact Sarah Maxwell.

Visit Philadelphia Flower Show