"Botanical Reveries" and "Plant Memoire"

Botanical Reveries 

an artist book installation by Catherine Nash 

(with Plant Memoire in upper left)
 

....exhibited at the Tohono Chul Park's main gallery 

in Tucson, Arizona from August 22nd through November 3rd, 2024

 

 

Botanical Reveries pays tribute to the world of plants, from mythology to science to poetry and art. This work has had a slow but steady journey to fruition: twenty six years ago, I found the antique belted leather case (on the desk) that unfolds when opened, and it inspired my imagination.

A significant undercurrent through my entire life has always been my love of botanicals…I can mark events in my life from plant to plant. I pondered a fictional life of an artist/amateur botanist who, sometime in the distant past, would carry her art supplies with her into the field to record her botanical discoveries and dreamings. I hand made the hemp paper and fashioned it into a really long accordion folded book for the botanist’s journal, started some plant drawings and stocked the leather case with vintage art supplies.

Reflecting a slow but consistent accumulation, my research took me into the history of botanical explorations into “unknown” lands, the varied ways that cultures interwove with their traditional use of plants as food and medicine, and how artists and poets utilized the metaphor of plants in their creative expression.

Victorian Field microscope from the 1880s.

Botanical Dissection Kit with my 2024 experimental diissection 

of a night blooming Cereus repandus flower.

15th century Italian botanical illustrations copied with gouache onto handmade paper.  

The original manuscript, a bound manuscript of 100 folios, is from northern Italy (mostly likely the Veneto) 

and contains a few different kinds of illustration styles, evidence of a series of augmentations 

to the manuscript made across several generations, is held within the Penn Libraries in Philadelphia, PA.

Color chart ca. 1790s. by Ferdinand Lucas Bauer [1760–1826] 
Handpainted example was adapted from Bauer’s original chart, ca. 1790s. 
Ferdinand Bauer, an Austrian botanical illustrator, uniquely recorded animals and plants as he found 
them live in the wild. He would analyze colors and assign them numbers in his drawings, to complete 
his illustrations back in his studio. 

 

  

 

First published in 1814, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours: Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, 

and the Arts, was the foremost guide to color and its classification for artists, scientists, naturalists, and anthropologists of its time. The system of classification was first devised by German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner in the late 18th-century. Shortly 

after Scottish painter Patrick Syme updated Werner’s guide, matching color swatches 

and his own list of examples to the provided nomenclature. The book provided vast handwritten details 

describing numerous specific colors found on an animal, plant, or mineral.  

In 1831, Charles Darwin carried and used the guide during his voyage to the Madeira, Canary, 

and Cape Verde islands on the H.M.S. Beagle to describe his observation of "new" species.

Drawings on an 1881 school slate by Catherine Nash of corn seedlings/roots.  

Images adapted from :

Botany: A Textbook for College and University Students, 

by Williams J. Robbins and Harold W. Rickett, 1929

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

"Herbarium of the Desert Southwest" by Catherine Nash, made in the manner of young Emily Dickinson’s folio of botanical specimens. [with poems by Emily Dickinson both on the desk and clipped to Nash’s herbarium]  In her 1,789 poems, Dickinson refers to plants nearly 600 times and names more than 80 varieties, sometimes by genus or species. 

  

Henry David Thoreau and other Transcendentalist writers

During the 1830s/40s in New England, centered in the vibrant village of Concord, Massachusetts where Emerson lived, a spiritual philosophy arose among preachers, poets, writers, philosophers, and numerous like-thinkers.  Transcendentalists have a deep gratitude and appreciation for the visual beauty of nature, and a keen observing eye that helps them to understand the structured inner workings of the natural world. 

Henry David Thoreau from Walden Pond, 1845: 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 

to front only the essential facts of life, 

and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, 

and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived….

Catherine Nash - Cyanotype of Porophyllum gracile within a hand-bound book of southwestern plants. 

[created for teaching elementary school students in the manner of Anna Atkins (1799-1871)]

Trained as a botanist, Anna Atkins developed an interest in photography as a means of recording 

botanical specimens for a scientific reference book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. 

This ca. 1843 publication was one of the first uses of photography to illustrate a book. 

Instead of traditional letterpress printing, the book's handwritten text and illustrations 

were created by the cyanotype method.

Catherine Nash, A Sprig in Morris’ Bottle, 2006

Painted as an ode to Morris Graves [1910-2001].  Gouache painting 

on an old Japanese poetry card, found in Morris Graves’ studio. 

Catherine was invited to spend two 3 week residencies [2006 & 2015] in Graves’ home and studio 

at The Lake, in Loleta, California, isolated on a lake in the middle of 300 acres of virgin redwood forest.  

Graves used the muted palette of the Northwest, Asian aesthetics and philosophy, and his personal iconography of 

birds, flowers, and other images to explore the nature of consciousness.

 

Morris Graves, Winter Bouquets. gouache painting on paper.

 

 

Papermaking references found in shelf to the left of the desk.

Examples of artist made tapa [bark cloth] of mulberry bark [Kozo] 

and artist made sheets of handmade paper made from varied plants.

Bundles kozo and gampi fiber with a pounding hammer, used by the artist and her students of all ages, 

that has been used to pound literally hundreds of pounds of cooked bark fibers into pulp for papermaking.

Nash has been avidly making paper from plants since 1984.

In the very lower left of this image,

one can find Nash's plant ID journals, 

in which she has tipped in plant samples, dating back to 1977.

The incomplete journal on the desk emphasizes a shift in perception from scientific to poetic, from technical to expressive. Surviving in a harsh environment, many desert plants protect themselves with dangerous thorns. In the journal, thorns became a metaphor for the worldwide viral pandemic.

At the start of the pandemic lockdown, I kept passing this plant “Crucifixion Thorn” (Canotia holocantha) 

along my hikes in the Sonoran Desert in mid March and early April. ...a very dangerous plant.

Exploring a wonderment and gratitude for the gifts plants can offer, Botanical Reveries celebrates the nourishment, healing, poetry and beauty we have growing all around us. The artist sits at the desk and steadily, over the years, compiles a life of botanical research, historical information, artifacts, and art…. and melds them into a visual accumulation of discovery and poetic interpretation.

To read more about Plant Memoire, please go to my previous blogpost.  Link

 

I am honored to have had my work included in 

"Exotic Sublime | On Plants"

Exhibited from August 22nd through November 3rd, 2024

in the Tohono Chul Park's Main Gallery in Tucson, Arizona.

Botanical Reveries,   2024

Artist Book Installation by Catherine Nash 

Catherine Nash: Artist Bio

With a lifelong dedication and consistency in her studio practice, Catherine Nash creates mixed media images and sculptures that respond to nature and reflect a spiritual and philosophical relationship with the environment: the poetics of landscape. The terrain, aesthetics and cultures of Japan, the rich gradations and spaciousness of Scandinavian summer night skies, her experiences with Native American friends and explorations of the southwestern desert wilderness influence and inform her artwork.

Specializing in Japanese and Western hand papermaking, encaustic painting and mixed media drawing, Nash has taught across the U.S., across western Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan. She is a faculty member at the AZ Sonoran Desert Museum Art Institute. Nash was, and is still, greatly honored to have received the “Lumies Artist 2015” award for southern Arizona, “awarded to an individual artist that has demonstrated excellence, originality and ingenuity in the local arts and culture sector.”

Her work has been included by invitation into numerous national and international exhibitions. Nash is a longtime resident of Tucson, Arizona.

Botanical Reveries, Medieval Botanicals in process - pandemic work. Online at the Penn Libraries site.

Plant Memoire

©Catherine Nash, "Plant Memoire", mixed media on handmade grey cotton rag paper. 36x36 in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist Statement - Plant Memoire     

 As one gets older, it is tempting to document one’s life by writing a memoire for family and posterity.  Personally, I am uninterested in writing it all down, but the thought did occur to me to create visual and written “memoires” of my experiences in nature…for myself… to muse over in my elder years. Plants have always drawn me to them: indeed, I have had a life long adoration of plants.  So I started by compiling and writing a plant “resumé”.  Certain moments with specific plants stood out from the rest to me, and I was compelled to draw them.  These nine drawings are the result.  I feel kinship with plants, from root to branch tip...their stretch into earth and sky.  An intuitive relationship between myself and the natural world has always evoked the desire to create within me: the life of root and bud are at the heart of our being.

 

Upper left 

CYCLAMEN (Cyclamen purpurascens) 

 

 

I moved from Paris to Vienna in 1982, and it was particularly difficult - a very unhappy time for me. Even though I was a guest student at a university there, I spoke very little German, knew no one, and was quite lonely. But I stayed on to fulfill my goal of studying the works of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.  Often I would hike into the hills outside the city, crunching through snow. Poking through the ice crystals were green leaves with a very distinctive patterning. With a start, I realized that they were cyclamen, a plant I’d nurtured while working in a greenhouse in my teens.  The green was rejuvenating and heartening - a life line - those little leaves offered me strength and resilience.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Upper middle

KOZO or Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera)

 

 

Tramping through the woods in Kasama, Japan, Richard and Asao taught us to identify the Kozo tree from the unique shape of its leaves.  Little did I realize how vital this plant would be to me. Used to make paper in Japan for over 2000 years, the inner bark of Broussonetia papyrifera is cooked, hand pounded, and formed into the most beautiful and refined handmade sheets of paper.  This plant was to become my intense passion, offering me not only the key to lecturing and teaching all around the world, but a versatile spark of wonderful inspiration for much of my art as well.

 

 

 

 

Upper right

SAGUARO (Carnegiea gigantea) 

I’ve greeted the very same saguaros each time I hike, and as I drive to work teaching at the Desert Museum…for all of the 40 plus years that I’ve lived in Tucson. Acknowledging my favorite saguaros as I hiked up Tumamoc Hill or into King’s Canyon, I would carefully touch them between their pleats while listening to the wind whistle through the spines. During my first summer in Tucson, I took a workshop in the Tucson Mountains with Tohono Oo’dham elders (offered by the Desert Museum) to learn how to use long saguaro ribs to harvest the ripe fruit. And just last year, my friend Terrol invited me to join his family at their annual camp to gather and cook saguaro fruit with them.  (It was the last spring before he died…)  I honor the majestic saguaro that stand as quiet witnesses to my life.  

 

Middle left

GOLDENSEAL (Hydrastis canadensis)

 

Out on the land of our 18 acre homestead in the Missouri Ozarks, huge patches of endangered goldenseal grew in the dappled sunlight of the hardwood forest that surrounded us.  Rob fostered an intimate relationship with these medicinal plants. He protected them. He whispered to them.  And they thrived.  We’d bushwhack into the woods with small shovels and a bucket and harvest just enough of the rhizome roots for medicinal use to last the coming year. A beautiful plant with light yellow-green leaves, goldenseal seems to glow in the shadows on the forest floor. They bloom in the spring with a single white flower that evolves into a bright, red (inedible) fruit.  The root, pungent and bitter, has healed us both over many decades.  Even now, when I’m about to drink its tea or to eat a root, I call to our Missouri goldenseal patch for healing… 

 

 

Center

DANDELION (Taraxacum officinale

 

How old was I?  Sitting in the grass inside the white picketed fence of our courtyard in Connecticut, I would press my face to the ground, smelling earth and green; watching tiny insect life and dreaming.  Dandelions grew among the grass.  I would watch, mesmerized, as the delicate seeds were carried aloft in the wind, propelled by my breath: the dreamlike reveries of childhood.

 

 

 

 

Middle right

REDWOOD TREE - Coastal (Sequoia sempervirens)

 

My memories of redwoods are completely tied to my two 3-week artist residencies in Morris Graves’ studio at The Lake in Loleta, California. There was a ring of redwood trees planted near the studio. I’d lie in the very center looking up to the sky and listen to the wind through the branches.  Deep within the almost 400 acres of virgin redwood forest on his property, in every kind of weather from fog to rain to sunshine, I’d hike around the 5 acre lake from the house and up a hill to find my favorite redwood. Sequestered in a deep hollow at the base of this amazing tree, I’d be protected from the weather. I could hear the muffled sound of the Pacific which was only 4 or 5 miles away as the crow flies. In there, feeling safe and sheltered, I’d dream, meditate, and sing.

 

 

Lower left

MAIDENHAIR FERN (Adiantum capillus-veneris)

 

 Ever since my first job in a greenhouse at age 14, maidenhair ferns have always been a favorite.  I think I’ve almost always had one as a houseplant.  I had hiked down from the north rim of the Grand Canyon on the N. Kaibab trail, crossed the Colorado River, and was just starting up the Bright Angel trail near the bottom when a tiny trickle of water beckoned me…I followed the water up into a natural grotto of rock.  When I poked my head into the “cave” opening, in the cool, dark shadow of the hidden spring was a maidenhair fern, ethereal and delicate, trembling from a slight breeze. I’d been called to it. Years later while grocery shopping, I “heard” a distinct but silent message, “Take me with you!”. I walked right over to the only maidenhair fern in the plant section and replied, “Okay!”  Only 2 days later, the plant completely died back. I kept whispering to it.  After several days, many delicate shoots appeared from the root ball. Resilient for  such a delicate plant, it still thrives in my kitchen.

 

 

 

Lower MIDDLE

NORTHERN RED OAK (Adiantum capillus-veneris)

 

 This particular tree is one I grew up with in Connecticut and later in New Hampshire.  I’ve climbed many an oak tree. More recently, I’ve been nurturing my passion for the writers of the 1850s who lived in Concord, Massachusetts and the environs. I’ve taken numerous pilgrimages to Concord, but one trip still stands out from the rest. I was meditating on the shore of Walden Pond near where Henry David Thoreau had built his homestead. I opened my eyes to scattered acorns amongst the crisp, rust colored leaf strewn forest floor.  Gathering a few for souvenirs, I thought, “If not now, when?”, and then swam to the center of Walden Pond to float and ponder!

  

 

Lower right

BAMBOO (Phyllostachys edulis)

 

 Keith and I were bushwhacking through the hills north of Kyoto when we came upon a remote Buddhist monastery.  A “competitive” sect to the Jōdo-shū tradition in which Keith had become a monk, they kindly invited us in and offered us something to eat.  As we knelt at a low table on tatami mats, we were served bamboo shoots and rice.  Just picked that morning, the tender shoots (called takenoko) were delicious!  On this particularly magical day, we pushed through a bamboo forest as we made our way back down the mountain. High above us, the wind blew through the bamboo trees - I’ll never forget the orchestra of melodic knocking sounds as the hollow culms (stalks) struck each other. Months later, living back in Kasama again with Asao at his 18th c. thatched roof farmhouse, I watched a bamboo shoot grow more than 30” in one day!