Seeds and Pods

ceramic pods by Alice Ballard

It is almost spring here and while it's too early to plant, I've been thinking about seeds. When you look at the forms of seeds, particularly magnified, they are astonishing: complex, organic, sculptural shapes. Some artists have taken seeds as inspiration or even a medium. Here are a few and their extraordinary work.

American ceramicist Alice Ballard's work features a lot of seeds, pods and other organic forms. She explores pods as a feminine form, like a womb, detailing textures and colours with wall-mounted pods. She has been exploring these ideas for years and yet still finds endless new variations.

ceramic pods by Alice Ballard

ceramic pod by Alice Ballard

ceramic pods by Alice Ballard

Carved sycamore seeds: 1 x 60 cm x 25 cm x 10 cm
1 x 48 cm x 18 cm x 9 cm by Liz McAuliffe

Seeds and pods appear in New Zealand artist Liz McAuliffe's bigger than life sculptures. By blowing up the minutiae of biological forms, she draws the viewers into to consider nature more carefully.

Abizia Pod, Size (h w d): 80 cm x 15 cm x 5 cm, acrylics on carved wood by Liz McAuliffe

Honesty Pods by Liz McAuliffe

American sculptor Pamela Sunday's work reflects natural forms, many reminiscent of microscopic seed forms. She has moved from the fashion world to build a sculptural practise inspired by science and nature, and exhibiting worldwide.

ceramic sculpture by Pamela Sunday

ceramic sculpture by Pamela Sunday

ceramic sculpture by Pamela Sunday

German artist Christiane Löhr's artworks include a collection made with plants including seeds. Piles and structures of delicate plant material take on organic architectural shapes and patterns.

Kleine Fläche little surface, 2007
airborne seeds, 5 x 20 x 35 cm by Christiane Löhr

Löwenzahnkissen dandelion cushion, 2009
dandelion seeds, 18 x 43 x 37 cm by Christiane Löhr

 

Kleiner Turm little tower, 1999
ivy seeds, 16 x 13 x 10 cm by Christiane Löhr

Korean artist Heejoo Kim's metalwork jewellery incorporates beautiful natural forms of pods and seeds if you want these beautiful forms to wear.

Necklace, Enameled copper, leather and thread by
Heejoo Kim

 

Brooch by
Heejoo Kim

Brooch by
Heejoo Kim

Metamorphosis and Maria Sibylla Merian; Backyard Butterflies to New World Entomological Explorer

Maria Sibylla Merian, linocut by Ele Willloughby, 2015.
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), leading entomologist of her day,
traveller and scientific illustrator is shown complete with
pomegranate branch and the life cycle of a butterfly from
caterpillar, to chrysalis in its cocoon to butterfly, inspired by
her famous work 'Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium'
- a process she carefully documented and explained.

Born April 2, 1647, Maria Sibylla Merian was the leading entomologist of her day, a great traveller and scientific illustrator. The German-born naturalist came from a Swiss family who founded one of one of Europe's largest publishing houses in the 17th century. This allowed her early access to many books on natural history. After she lost her father at age three, and her mother remarried still life painter Jacob Marrel. Her step-father and his students trained her as an artist. She began painting insects and plants by 13. She wrote, "I spent my time investigating insects. At the beginning, I started with silk worms in my home town of Frankfurt. I realized that other caterpillars produced beautiful butterflies or moths, and that silkworms did the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to see how they changed".

She married her step-father's apprentice Johann Andreas Graff, they had a daughter Johanna Helena, and moved to his home city of Nurenburg. She was able to contribute to the family income by painting, creating embroidery designs, and teaching drawing lessons to unmarried daughters of wealthy families, something which also allowed her access to the finest gardens where she continued collecting and documenting. She published her first book of natural illustrations, titled Neues Blumenbuch, in 1675 at age 28. In 1679, she first published her insect research in a two-volume, illustrated book focusing on insect metamorphosis. She moved twice to be with her mother after her step-father's death, then to join her half-brother at a Labadist religious community. She also split with her husband. After her mother's death, she moved to Amsterdam in 1691 and divorced her husband in 1692.

In Amsterdam, she was able to observe some of the collections of insects which had been brought back from Suriname. She became curious whether the life cycles of the exotic butterflies and other insects mirrored those Europe species she knew well. She was able to secure the city of Amsterdam's permission and and travel grant to travel to Suriname in South America, along with her younger daughter Dorothea Maria. She further funded her travels by selling 255 paintings. She planned a five year mission to study insects, making her perhaps the first person to plan a proper scientific expedition!

Maria Sibylla Merian, from
Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, Plate LX. 1705

She travelled throughout the colony sketching insects and plants. She criticized the Dutch planters treatment of indigenous people and black slaves (though she relied upon amerindian slaves in her residence and her excursions, and brought a young amerindian woman named Indianin back with her to Holland). She used local native names for the plants and described local uses. Malaria likely cut her expedition short and forced her return to the Dutch Republic in 1701. She sold her collected specimen and in 1705 she published a book Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium about the insects of Suriname.

She suffered a stroke in 1715 which left her partially paralysed and died a pauper in 1717. Her daughter Dorothea published Erucarum Ortus Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis, a collection of her mother's work, posthumously. Both Dorothea and Johanna followed their mother's lead and became botanical illustrators.

Copper engraving from Maria Sibylla Merian's
Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, Plate XLIX.

Modern scholars now appreciate her pioneering scientific work as well as the beauty of her scientific illustrations. During her life time insects were still reviled and people still put credence in the Aristotelian idea that they were spontaneously generated or "born of mud". She meanwhile detailed the life cycle of 186 species and explained the poorly-understood or even unknown process of metamorphosis. Science was conducted in Latin and her publications were in the vernacular, making them more popular with high society than contemporary scientists. Despite her knowledge and original research contributions she was not really recognized as a scientist in her day (though Carl Linnæus (1707-1778), father of taxonomy, did cite her in his Systema Naturæ of 1753). It was very unusual for a woman in her day to pursue science, let alone travel the world in its pursuit. She was able to do so because she began her studies with the accessible - animals she could find in her own backyard, and become the leading expert on metamorphosis. During her great expedition, she also noted their habitats, feeding habits and uses to indigenous people. Her classification of butterflies and moths are still relevant today. She detailed plants, frogs, snakes, spiders, iguanas, and tropical beetles and was the first European to describe both army ants and leaf cutter ants as well as their effect on other organisms.

Speckled caiman and a false coral snake by Maria Sibylla Merian
from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium II., Plate LXX.

Her work had a strong influence on future scientific illustration. Her work shows great accuracy and she was the first to illustrate the complete life cycle of insects. In her time, funding her expedition and her unladylike devotion to insects was ridiculed, but she is remembered as one of the best insect and flower illustrators of all time. Her daughters and student Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) all went on to be renown botanical illustrators.

Shortly after her death, Peter the Great saw and purchased a large number of her works in Amsterdam. Her portrait was printed on the 500 DM note before Germany converted to the euro. Her portrait has also appeared on a 0.40 DM stamp and two American 32 cent stamps. Many schools, place names, a scientific research vessel and a crater on Venus have been named in her honour.

One last tidbit (or two) for you history of science buffs: Dorothea's daughter, Maria Sibylla Merian's granddaughter married mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783). Maria Sibylla Merian was also first cousin to Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667-1741), painter and engraver who invented the four colour printing process (using an RYBK color model similar to the modern CMYK system).

Multimedia Cacti

The elusive cactibou, linocut by Ele Willoughby 2014

I've been working on a sort of quite possibly completely imaginary cryptozoological menagerie, which began sometime after the elusive cactibou a prickly desert cat-cactus hybrid complete with caribou/saguaro antlers improbably appeared fully formed in my mind. (Part of the delight of this project for me is to write the pseudoscientific description of each of my beasties. You can find the cactibou's description, from zoology to ethnobotany here.)

People sometimes ask me where I get my ideas. It's not an obvious question to answer well ("from my head?"), but I do know that cats are indeed prickly, mine seems to store water and disdain drinking, and that cacti seem to be more an more apparent in art I see. I thought today I would share some of the cacti art I've been admiring.

Valentina Glez Wohlers' Prickly Pair Chair- Classic

Their unusual though organic forms are appealing, but I love the whimsical improbability of cactus as home decor, as the prickly plants do not suggest comfort. Mexican born London-based designer Valentina Glez Wohlers' heritage shines in her delightfully whimsical Prickly Pair Chairs, which merge Mexican cactus shapes and colours and patterns with traditional European chair designs.

Valentina Glez Wohlers' Prickly Pair Chair- Tenango de Doria

More straitghtforward perhaps would be a simple cactus shaped pillow. Here's a cute one complete with DIY from everything emilty. 

DIY a cacti sampler with a Japanese craft book

It's easy to find cacti in all sorts of different forms and media. Check out ceramicist Lina Cofán’s
amazing wunderkammer of cacti and other plants.  

Lina Cofán

Lina Cofán

Lina Cofán

There are even functional ceramic cacti, like this beauty of a teapot:

lofficina ceramic cactus teapot

 

I love also the cacti in perhaps even less expected media.

ThornAndNeedle has a series of knit cacti

Cactus cake by Tetyana

Cactus cupcakes via Alana Jones Mann

Czech artist Veronika Richterová's magical sculptures from recycled PET bottles include some truly magical cacti (and jellyfish, amongst other things, via thisiscolossal).

Veronika Richterová PET cacti

Veronika Richterová PET cacti

Veronika Richterová PET cacti detail

There are also some beautiful illustrations in more traditional media.

Cactus Nest by Michelle Morin (unitedthread on Etsy)

Cactus Trio by Michelle Morin

Bird Sanctuary No. 5 by Michelle Morin

Anatomy of a Cactus by Rachel Ignotofsky

Anna Atkins on Ada Lovelace Day

Ada, Countess Lovelace, 3rd edition linocut by Ele Willoughby

Today is the 7th annual international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology, science and math, Ada Lovelace Day 2015 (ALD15). I'm sure you'll all recall, Ada, brilliant proto-software engineer, daughter of absentee father, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Lord Byron, she was able to describe and conceptualize software for Charles Babbage's computing engine, before the concepts of software, hardware, or even Babbage's own machine existed! She foresaw that computers would be useful for more than mere number-crunching. For this she is rightly recognized as visionary - at least by those of us who know who she was. She figured out how to compute Bernouilli numbers with a Babbage analytical engine. Tragically, she died at only 36. Today, in Ada's name, people around the world are blogging.

You can find my previous Ada Lovelace Day posts here. 

This year, I thought I'd take the opposite approach from last year. I wrote about Marie Skłodowska-Curie last year, despite her fame and the risk that she was likely the only women in STEM that many people can name. I chose to write about her because it was artificial to avoid her; she really did make incredible discoveries and lived an extraordinary life. This year, I've selected a scientist who is rather new to me, and who was not an icon of science. She was nonetheless a pioneer. I've selected her because she is precisely the sort of scientist we forget - especially if female. What she did was important, and cutting edge in her time, and while it may not have been epochmaking it was the sort of important, incremental, methodical work which represents much of the scientific entreprise, and most of the advance of science throughout history. I believe the concept of the "paradigm shift" might be useful, but it is often dangerously simplistic and leads to a false narrative of a series of great men (almost invariably it is a man who is selected to represent the bringer of the new idea) revolutionizing science. Science, and its history, is more often much more involved, non-linear, over-lapping and interwoven than this type of narrative presents. Lastly, I love that this particular scientist was working at the intersection of art and science.

This is a portrait of English botanist and photographer Anna Atkins (1799-1871), née Children. It combines both a hand-carved lino block portrait in dark silver ink, and a screenprint of the silhouette of fern leaves in cobalt blue ink, mimicking the cyanotypes she was known for. It is printed by hand on lovely Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper, 11" x 14" (28 cm x 35.6 cm). (c) Ele Willoughby, 2015

Anna Atkins (1799-1871), née Children, was an English botanist and photographer. She is the first person to have illustrated a book using photographs, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843. Note that: not the first woman, the first person. She lived at a time when it was possible to be a self-trained scientist, especially if you were middle or upper class and received an education and the financial freedom to devote your time to pursue your subject. (The Mary Annings of the world, who managed to make a name for themselves in science despite her class, religions and complete lack of financial ressources, are rare indeed). She was raised and instructed by her father, a naturalist, and her social circle included those who were developing (no pun intended) the latest, brand new photographic technology. So, she was at the right place at the right time. But that doesn't take away from the fact that she had the knowledge, skill, insight and ability to immediately see the utility of the method for descriptive science and to document a specific field of sub-field of botany, with her collection of the algae (seaweeds) of Britain. I think this should be understood as equivalent to a modern-day scientist keeping abreast of other fields of study and rapidly mastering a new high-tech tool to apply it to her field. Even William Henry Fox Talbot, who who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to modern photographic methods, was not able to publish The Pencil of Nature the first commercially printed photographic book, until eight months after she produced Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions.

Her mother died when she was still an infant, but she was close with her naturalist father and received a much more scientific education than was common for women in her time. Her 250 detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father's translation of Lamarck's 'Genera of Shells'. This translation was important to the nomenclature of shells, because her illustration allowed readers to properly identify Lamarck's genera. She married John Pelly Atkins in 1825 and devoted herself to botany and collecting specimen, including for Kew Gardens. In 1839, she became a member of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, one of the few scientific organizations open to women. She became interested in algae, after William Henry Harvey published A Manual of the British marine Algae in 1841.

Through her father, she was friends with both William Henry Fox Talbot and Sir John Herschel, who (amongst other things) invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842. Within a single year of its invention, she self-published the first known book of illustrated with cyanotype photographs and was likely one of the two first women to make a photograph. She recorded her seaweed specimen for posterity by making photograms by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper. Atkins self-published her photograms in the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843, and two further volumes in the next decade. She collaborated with Anne Dixon (1799–1864) to produce further books of cyanotypes on ferns and flowering plants and also published other non-scientific or photographic books. In 1865, she donated her collections to the British Museum.

I've shown her based on an early photographic portrait, along with some fern leaves which I've worked with directly, much how she illustrated her own specimen.

Have a look at her cyanotypes and a video of one of the surviving copies of her book.



(Cross-posted from the minouette blog)