ArtPlantae Today

Scientific Symposium and Medicinal Botany Walk

September 12, 2013 by Tania Marien

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Bridging the Gap Between Alternative and Conventional Medicine
Lloyd Library and Museum
Cincinnati, OH
October 12, 2013

The Lloyd Library and Museum invites you to attend Bridging the Gap between Alternative and Conventional Medicine, its first major scientific symposium. Speakers and participants will explore the complicated issue of using herbal and other natural remedies in a society that has long relied on conventional medical practices.

Alternative, sometimes referred to as Traditional, medicine tends to approach health from an entirely different perspective, looking to prevent rather than having to cure. However, the two medical practices can and do work together, and there is a way to integrate the two methods to obtain optimum health.

The Lloyd is bringing to Cincinnati some of the biggest advocates for herbal and natural medicine, including:

Mark Blumenthal, Founder and Executive Director of the American Botanical Council
Roy Upton, Executive Director of the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia ®
Sheila Kingsbury, professor of Medical Botany at Bastyr University
Lisa Gallagher, local naturopathic physician from the Alliance Institue for Integrative Medicine (Cincinnati)

Jan Scaglione, Clinical Toxicologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Cincinnati Drug and Poison Control Center, will serve as moderator in an open afternoon session, facilitating interaction between the speakers and audience. Attendees can expect to come away with a better understanding of the alternative therapies available and how to integrate natural medicines with their routine medical care to achieve a healthier lifestyle.

The symposium begins at 8:00 AM and ends at 3:00 PM. Registration for the event is $50 and includes light continental breakfast and afternoon snacks. Registration deadline is October 1, 2013.

On October 13, 2013, a Lloyd representative along with local herbalist/botanist, Abby Artemisia, will lead a medicinal botany hike at the Curtis Gates Lloyd Wildlife Management Area (CGLWMA) in Crittenden, Kentucky. The walk begins at 10:30 AM at the CGLWMA and ends at 12:30 PM. The cost for this educational and fun event is $25.00. Registration deadline is October 1, 2013.

Space is limited for both dates so please register soon if you would like to attend. Combined registration for both events is $65.00. Details and a registration form can be found on the Lloyd Library and Museum website.

View Details, Get Registration Form

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 general public, through library services and programming that bring science, art, and history to life. It is open Monday-Friday, 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM, and on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM.

Posted in botany, Education, general botany, History, Learning Opportunities, Reference, Special Announcements, Special Events |

Drawing Data & Hypotheses

September 11, 2013 by Tania Marien

On Monday Jennifer Landin told us how she collected data for her research. Did the data collected through testing tools, her Observational Skills Assessment, interviews and weekly observations support her hypothesis?

Well, yes and no. In the case of content knowledge, the students who drew did perform slightly better on the assessment. But there was only a tiny difference in their class grades. Considering that students were only drawing for ~5-10 minutes per week, though, the differences I saw between the groups were incredibly interesting.

For Attitude-Toward-Biology, I ran into an unexpected problem…

Find Out More

Posted in botanical art, drawing, Education, Learning Opportunities, Special Articles & Interviews, Special Events, teaching and learning |

Williamsburg Artist Paints Herb of the Year

September 11, 2013 by Tania Marien

Berries for Nana's Jam, watercolor. © 2013 by Linda C. Miller. All rights reserved.

Every year the Herb Society of America selects a plant of the year. This year the chosen plant is the elderberry bush. Williamsburg botanical artist, Linda Miller, painted this heirloom plant for the 2013 Mid-Atlantic Gathering program.

The elderberry plant is a native of North America. Its flowers and fruits may be used to create jams, syrups, pie and wine. Linda worked from a specimen at The Williamsburg Botanical Garden in Freedom Park.

This month Linda has two print-signing events. The first event will occur this weekend at The Gallery at York Hall on September 14 and 15 from 10 AM – 2 PM. The second signing will occur at The Williamsburg Botanical Garden during their Art in the Garden event and plant sale on Saturday, September 28 (8 AM – 2 PM).

You are invited to celebrate the 2013 Herb of the Year, to see Linda’s original painting and to learn more about botanical art.

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

Collecting Data to Study Drawing in the Classroom

September 9, 2013 by Tania Marien

What kind of data did Jennifer Landin collect in her studies about the use of perceptual drawing in the classroom?

I measured knowledge of biology with a pre- and post-test (kind of like a short final exam). I also asked students to take an Attitude-Toward-Biology test and my Observational Skills Assessment. I supplemented these tests with interviews, questionnaires and weekly observations of student behaviors.

All of the students had the same lecture class and same lab activities. So, as much as possible, all the experiences the students had in class were the same. The only difference was a “Journal” randomly assigned to each student. Some students had drawing activities to complete, others had writing tasks.

More About Our Conversation with Jennifer Landin

Posted in botanical art, drawing, Education, Learning Opportunities, Special Articles & Interviews, Special Events |

The Adult Drawing Process

September 6, 2013 by Tania Marien

What kind of factors influence the drawing process in adults?

Psychology professors Dale J. Cohen and Susan Bennett explore this topic in a series of experiments conducted at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

In Why Can’t Most People Draw What They See?, Cohen and Bennett present four possible reasons why adults may not be able to draw what they see. They explain that drawing inaccuracies in adult drawings may occur because of:

Artist Misperception of an Object

Artist Inability to Make Good Representational Decisions
This refers to an artist’s inability to decide what to include in a drawing and how to represent it.

Artist Motor Skills
This refers to an artist’s ability to create the proper marks on paper after they have perceived an object and made good decisions about how to represent an object. Cohen & Bennett (1997) explain that mark making “is a physical process, not a perceptual or cognitive process” and that artists must have the “appropriate motor skills” to make the marks required to create a representational drawing.

Artist Misperception of Their Drawing
This refers to an artist’s perception of their own work. If an artist perceives a mark to be more accurate than it really is, drawing inaccuracies will go uncorrected.

Cohen and Bennett (1997) created four experiments to assess the effect decision-making, motor skills and artist misperception of drawings have on the drawing process. Each experiment was designed to investigate these effects in isolation. The participants in these studies were college students. Some served as experimental subjects (i.e., they completed rendering tasks assigned by the researchers) and some served as critics (i.e., evaluators) of the drawings created by the other students.

After methodically assessing the effects described above, Cohen & Bennett (1997) observed the following:

An artist’s decision-making capabilities are “a relatively minor source” (Cohen & Bennett, 1997) of drawing inaccuracies in adult drawings.
Motor coordination is not a significant source of drawing inaccuracies in adult drawings.
An artist’s misperception of their own work is not a source of drawing inaccuracies in adult drawings.

So what is a source of drawing inaccuracies in adult drawings?

An artist’s misperception of an object.

How Cohen & Bennett (1997) designed each experiment and assessed each effect in isolation is very interesting. For a detailed account of Cohen and Bennett’s materials, methods, findings and statistical analysis for each experiment, please see their paper. Their paper is available for free on the website of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Cohen & Bennett (1997) is one of the many articles cited by Jennifer Landin in her dissertation. Do you have questions about drawing and learning?

Join our conversation with Jennifer

Literature Cited
Cohen, Dale J. and Susan Bennett. 1997. Why can’t most people draw what they see? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 23(3): 609-621. Web. http://people.uncw.edu/cohend/research/papers/Cohen%20and%20Bennett%2097.pdf [accessed 6 September 2013]

Assessing Observational Skills in a Classroom

September 6, 2013 by Tania Marien

To collect data to evaluate the use of drawing as a learning tool in a classroom setting, Jennifer had to create her own assessment tool. She created a tool called the Observational Skills Assessment. What did she think of this experience?

Ugh! That was the hardest part of my dissertation.

Learn more about Jennifer’s assessment tool

Posted in botanical art, drawing, Education, Learning Opportunities, Special Articles & Interviews, teaching and learning |

Preconceptions in Biology & Changing One’s Mind

September 4, 2013 by Tania Marien

Jennifer Landin is the featured guest for September. Her research about using drawing as a learning tool in a biology classroom is based upon Posner’s Theory of Conceptual Research. I asked Jennifer what Posner’s Theory is all about. She replied:

Posner basically says that you start with a preconception. When you get some new information, you either integrate it with your current knowledge or you need to adjust your current understanding into something new. The problem is that the world often makes sense with our preconceptions, and changing can be kind of uncertain and scary. So in order to change, it’s got to really be worth it…

Learn more about Posner’s Theory