Artist Jessica Rath has worked with apple breeders and archivists to create ceramic and photographic works that consider the the beauty, diversity, and existential dilemma of the apple: how do apples propagate, and how do varieties survive? Her exhibit, "take me to the apple breeder," is at the Pasadena Museum of California Art through February 24.
Israeli artist Ori Gersht uses natural subjects to embody peace, beauty, and luxury. His flowers, forests, and fruits are edens, disrupted by a dark world. His first museum survey is at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston through January 6th.
To celebrate the season, botanic gardens and conservatories decorate their collections with lights, ribbons, and sculptures. From Washington's glowing grapes to Nevada's illuminated cacti, gardens feature their emblematic plants as well as the always-lovely poinsettia.
Photographer Edward Steichen was also a delphinium breeder. In 1936, New York's MoMA hosted an exhibit of new varieties that the artist had hybridized on his 10-acre farm in Connecticut.
To look at a history of botanic illustration is to look at the changing significance of a plant over time. A new exhibit at Lotusland, in Montecito, California, does just this. Historic prints document these transitional periods—of plant as medical specimen, to exotic beauty, to garden delight—in a show titled "The Plant Hunters: Botanical Illustrations from the 16th to 19th Centuries," which runs through November 2.
German artist Regine Ramseier's "Wunderkammer" installation with 2,000 seed heads suspended from a ceiling leaves viewers wondering: Is that where the dreams go when I wish upon a dandelion?
American artist Jonathon Keats designed a Photosynthetic Restaurant, where plants are nourished with cocktails of individual wavelengths. Acrylic filters control the sunlight that reaches the plants, offering a tasting menu designed to enhance a plant's energy and experience. Menu options include traditional, avant-garde, and spicy.
"Ellsworth Kelly Plant Drawings" is on view at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show spans sixty years of work, including his early sketches in 1940s Paris, his recent work in upstate New York, and everywhere in between. “Each drawing that I’ve done, I have found. Meaning, I see a plant I want to draw."
An exhibit at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh documents the success of a project called extInked. A social experiment and an ecological initiative, the project paired one hundred of the country's threatened flora, fauna, and fungi with volunteers that would become ambassadors for their species, with a tattoo to prove it.
London-based artist Zadok Ben-David makes flowers and trees out of cut metal, including his best-known pieces, which feature intricate flowers, modeled after Victorian illustrations.
