Moss grows better than grass in my backyard at home.
© Asuka Hishiki, Zapotec Heirloom Tomato, 2020, watercolor on paper
It’s a shady haven where we’re coaxing along ferns that generous neighbors have contributed. Vegetables, though, certainly don’t ripen in the shadow of so many trees. After a few years of chasing the sun in various planters, trying to grow tomatoes and enough basil for batches of pesto, now we grow herbs and wildflowers in that backyard planter and pick up produce at farmers’ markets.
This summer, Woodson Art Museum galleries highlight a bountiful harvest. Throughout two exhibitions, visitors point out favorites and marvel at detailed, realistic depictions and figments of artistic imaginings, too.
Abundant Future: Cultivating Diversity in Garden, Farm, and Field features botanical artwork of cultivated plants grown for clothing, healing, and food.
In Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination, the Seattle-based artist designed her imaginary species to evolve and flourish in unexpected and optimistic ways. Her colorful images arrayed on gallery walls also move and twirl, via an app and augmented reality. When viewed on mobile-device screens, glass-sculpture tree stumps seem to sprout to life with fantastical creations.
What a wonderful way to while away a summer day.
Create your own fanciful fruit in Art Park and take in al fresco views from the Rooftop Sculpture Garden. Edible leafy greens grown there, nurtured and gleaned by Shannon Pueschner, curator of exhibitions, have been supplementing break-room staff lunches with enough for frequent shared salads.
No matter how your garden grows, nourish your creativity with visits soon and often while botanical art remains on view through Sunday, August 28.
© Kelly Radding, Charentais Melon, 2020, egg tempera on panel
Abundant Future: Cultivating Diversity in Garden, Farm, and Field was curated by the American Society of Botanical Artists and The New York Botanical Garden.
