Involucrata, launching in June 2022, will be part experiential public installation, part future history diorama, staged as a window display. Viewed from the inside, it will be a stylized tropical plant filled landscape that is welcoming, safe, and beautiful. From the outside, it is a diorama where the endangered of the Anthropocene era are examined. Window glass will separate our present from a nature-depleted dystopian future.
Inspiration for the exhibit interior: Zep, The End, 2018. Panels from the bande desinée.
Involucrata, launching in June 2022, will be part immersive botanical installation, part diorama. The proposed two-week installation, to be situated in an empty storefront in Woonsocket, will be filled with plants ranging from typical house plants to agricultural crops of tropical origin to less common botanical specimens, largely from Central and South America, with a few from South East Asia and Oceania. Inside the exhibit, attendees step into a stylized landscape inspired by the imagined wilds of Henri Rousseau’s The Dream and real, though contrived, spaces like Las Pozas in Xilitla, Mexico, the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. Involucrata is botanical Latin derived from the word ‘involvere”, to wrap. Inside the piece, attendees will feel wrapped in a heightened sense of nature’s embrace, specifically in a refuge away from technology. The goal is to invoke a tropical rainforest, with a “canopy” filled with epiphytes, arching palms, vines, and banana-like trees. I envision a space of calm, welcome, and safety that can fulfill attendees’ emotional need for reconnection with nature.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint” Pt. 2, 1987. Riker enters the holodeck.
Inspirations for the exhibit interior: stylized landscapes of Henri Rousseau’s The Dream, Las Pozas in Xilitla, Mexico, Star Trek: The Original Series, and Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s holodeck.
Viewed through window glass on the outside however, the piece is a natural history diorama where the endangered of the Anthropocene era are examined. As attendees inevitably pause to take shots for Instagram, they become a tableau vivant of our current and varying feelings about nature and what we stand to lose in the face of climate change and widespread environmental degradation.
Still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film, Solaris. Around 16 min into the Criterion Channel version.
In addition to the external frame of the window, there will be a secondary internal frame made of computer cables reflecting the last 40 years of technology. Their Gigeresque arrangement with mirror the natural vines, while also showing that technology and nature failed to strike a balance.
Test of piece for exhibit entrance featuring electronic cables, tillandsia, and pothos.
Inside, thus, is an idealized picturesque present where direct interaction and kinship with nature, whether cultivated or wild, is possible. Outside is a dystopian future where that relationship has been permanently ruptured and turned into a historical artifact.
Funding provided in part by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.
Rousseau thrilled the art world with his naive and almost psychedelic visions of exotic jungles. The artist, who never left Paris, drew his inspiration from the city’s botanical gardens. Experience a magical night in [les grandes serres du Jardin des Plantes] brought to life by the painter’s visions. Once the last visitors have left, the greenhouse reveals its secrets with the gradual emergence of a dream-like world of fantastic plants and imaginary animals.
Based on The Dream by Henri Rousseau
Writer and Director: Nicolas Autheman
Original Music: Fabien Bourdier
Coproduction: ARTE France, Les Films du Tambour de Soie
Gorilla diorama in the Hall of African Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in NY. Photo by Kathryn Carse.
Location: Hall of African Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in NY.
Creator: Background by William R. Leigh, assisted by Robert Kane. Foreground by Albert E. Butler, assisted by Joseph Guerry, George Frederick Mason, Ushinosuke Narahara, George Petersen, and Fred Scherer. Taxidermy by Carl Akeley.
A Masterclass for the Culture in Quarantine Series, self-filmed in her South London studio. Using paper, scissors and glue, Es Devlin guides viewers through the process of turning ideas into forms from broad research and initial sketches to physical projection-mapped sculpture.
Candide Gardening gives us a tour of the Giant Houseplant Takeover, a temporary exhibit inside the Glasshouse at RHS Garden Wisley.
In Gardeners’ World 2020 episode 1, presenter Frances Tophill also visits the exhibition. Click here to watch the clip.
Gardeners’ World 2020 Episode 1 (26 March 2020). Screen grab.Gardeners’ World 2020 Episode 1 (26 March 2020). Screen grab.Gardeners’ World 2020 Episode 1 (26 March 2020). Screen grab.
It’s so easy, while trapped in the infinite Instagram scroll of other people’s things, to be seduced by a plant’s trendiness to think that I actually want to grow it. Or worse, for me to want to make my own plant collection a clone of some influencer/educator. This post is me stepping away from what I think is aesthetically beautiful on someone else’s timeline and delving deeper into what sort of plant filled sanctuary I wish to create.
When I close my eyes and envision a beautiful green misted fantasy, what do I see?
Former customs agent turned fine artist Henri Rousseau didn’t leave Paris for inspiration when he painted his imagined versions of tropical forests in the late 1800’s and early 1900s. According the Anne Tempkin, the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in NY where you can see the painting in person, “[Rousseau] got all of his knowledge for the horticultural details by going to the botanical gardens in Paris, by going to the zoos to look at the various birds and animals, by reading lots of magazines that came out at the time that were charting the sort of exotic places that travelers and explorers were just starting to go to on other continents.”
The Dream is perhaps the best distillation of my imagined plant-filled paradise: me in effortless repose ensconced amongst the plants, especially intrusively lush, large leafed plants. For a real life example of what day to day life surrounded by so much green would be like, I look to Hilton Carter’s beautiful Baltimore home and studio.
My picks: Gunnera spp., Strelitzia nicolai (white bird of paradise), Strelitzia reginae ˆ(orange bird of paradise), Heliconia wagneriana, Heliconia rostrata (lobster claw), Vriesea splendens (flaming sword bromeliad), Tillandsia cyanea (pink quill), Musa acuminata (dwarf Cavendish banana), Colocasia esculenta (taro), Dieffenbachia spp., Spathiphyllum wallisii ‘Sensation’ (a large leafed peace lily), Monstera Deliciosa, Aglaonema nitidum (Chinese evergreen), Medinilla magnifica (I know this plant is going to be a heartbreaker, but I want to try anyway).
Heliconia wagneriana in The Queen’s Gambit (2020) S1E4 Middle Game.
Silly Seussian Plants
Nature is red in tooth and claw, but sometimes it is also quite ridiculous. Truffula trees (as well as Brown Bar-ba-loots and Humming-Fish) from Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (1971)..
In his 2001 supposed “style bible for indoor plants” Potted, landscape and garden designer Andy Sturgeon went on a harrumphing judgemental tear about flamboyant plants. My immediate thought was, “But those are the best ones, of course!” I want a little whimsy in my plant collection, where a few specimens make me giggle or even laugh out loud when I look at them.
The oxygen garden on the Icarus II in Sunshine (2007).Overgrown oxygen garden on Icarus I in Sunshine (2007). (Source: Position art director Denis Schnegg). Plants used include bamboo, tree fern, turf grass, and fern.
Sunrise is my least favorite of Danny Boyle’s films. The casting in the sci-fi thriller was top notch, but the script was a mess, the science flawed, the crew mix seemingly optimized for max discord, and character deaths utterly pointless. Ugh, it sucked. But it is still one of the few space-based sci-fi movies that incorporates living plants into mission critical processes on board a spacecraft. There is an “OxygenGarden” responsible for producing and replenishing the ship’s air supply. The garden’s appearance was brief — sadly, it was doomed from the start– but it was interesting to think about the other living beings we could bring out into the stars with us. I was also struck by Corazon, the botanist played by Michelle Yeoh, and her tender care and obvious devotion to the garden.
My picks: I don’t have any specific plants in mind for this one. My initial choices were the over-hyped “air-purifying plants.” Unfortunately, the marketing claims seem to be vastly overblown, because of course, they are.
Yakushima Forest as referenced in Princess Mononoke and the Hoh Rain Forest
Princess Mononoke is the only of Hayao Miyazaki’s films that I truly love, partly because I prefer my anime with at least a touch of ultraviolence, but mostly because of the film’s portrayal of the forest, its spirits, mysteries, and generosity. The forest as rendered in the film heavily references the subtropical evergreen forest of Yakushima in Southwestern Japan. Yakushima is home of one of the world’s oldest trees, the Jōmon Sugi, a Japanese cedar estimated to be at least 2,000 years old.
By contrast, my oldest plant is a 12-year old Dracaena marginata called Muppet. My plants are babies, saplings, and seedlings, but I want a connection to wisdom and awe that one can feel when in the presence of long-lived beings. For now, I’m making due with plants that can (theoretically) live and grow with me for decades even if they will never achieve the same majesty of a specimen found in its natural environment.
My picks: Ficus elastica, Ficus religiosa, Crassula ovata, Zamioculcas zamiifolia, Philodendron spp. To mimic a feeling of a primordial forest, I’m working on a long term project of growing 3-6 foot long Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) that I can drape in select spots throughout the house. I am very lucky to have a husband who appreciates having an eccentric wife.
Alien plants and soundstages from Star Trek: The Original Series.
Still from Star Trek: The Original Series S1E2 The Man Trap (1966).Still from Star Trek: The Original Series S1E2 The Man Trap (1966).Still from Star Trek: The Original Series S2E5 The Apple (1967).Stills from Star Trek: The Original Series S2E22 By Any Other Name (1968).
A funny trick of memory is that as technology advances my visual recollections of Star Trek: The Original Series adjust to match the emotional impact the show had on me as a kid. I loved the alien planet sets, with their cheesily rendered plants and boldly gelled skies. Stepping onto another world with the main trio and the away team was fascinating, maybe a little sexy, dangerous even, but definitely entertaining.
My picks: Tillandsia spp., Vanda spp., Phalaenopsis spp., Davallia spp (rabbit foot fern, though I think tarantula leg fern would be more accurate), Aegagropila linnaei (Marimo). Longterm, I want to figure out how to grow foxfire (various species of bioluminescent fungi). Note: an environmental caution on Marimo.
My picks: I’m still doing research on this one, particularly about beneficial insects to keep plant pests at bay and fertilizers to keep plant health up. I’m particularly intrigued by the plant processing techniques of vivarium enthusiasts as they may be applicable. Blanc’s setups seem to be primarily hydroponic where epiphytic plants are rooted between sheets of a non-biodegradable felt substrate. I’m unclear about how much upkeep is required, whether algal growth is an issue, etc. Other layouts and designs are available commercially and I’m leaning towards Florafelt’s Living Walls. The vertical wall on the San Francisco Botanical Garden Bookstore uses Florafelt Pocket Panels. Stay tuned.
San Francisco Botanical Garden’s Ancient Plants Garden
“Living Fossils” at the San Francisco Botanical Garden’s Ancient Plants Garden in 2019. Photos by Cat Laine.
I like a survivor, and the plants featured in SFBG’s Ancient Plants Garden are the best survivors of all, with these ‘living fossils” first appearing on our planet eons ago.
My picks: Phlebodium aureum (blue star fern) Nephrolepis spp, Adiantum spp. (maidenhair fern) Platycerium bifurcatum (staghorn fern), Cycas revoluta (Sago palm), Blechnum gibbum (dwarf tree fern) or Dicksonia antarctica (Australian tree fern), Araucaria heterophylla (Norfolk Island Pine).
Longwood Gardens’ Silver Garden
The Silver Garden at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania features grey-blue (glaucous) and silvery plants from arid regions all over the world, including cacti and Tillandsia from the Americas, South African succulents, and a whole slew of Mediterrean plants to name a few. Under similar climatic pressures, many of these plants independently developed the same strategies to cope with dry environmental conditions and searing sunlight.
The children’s “Paradise” in Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did, particularly the bower.
Nature’s embrace. In the absence of land to create an outdoor garden and a protected bower, I want to use some of my more unwieldy plants to create a little private reading/writing nook. I want one spot where I can tuck myself into and be completely surrounded in nature’s comforting embrace. The only signal that I am there would be Lang Elliott’s recordings from his Pure Nature app and maybe a curse now and again, as yet another fungus gnat tries to fly up my nose.
Sanctuary Grove and Freya’s fantastical symbiosis with Chaurli in God of War (PS4)
Sanctuary Grove, Freya, and Chaurli in God of War 4 (2018). Jump to 6 minutes 25 seconds.
Up to this point, most of the plants listed above mainly possess green foliage of various hues, saturations, and brightness, but green all the same. I would like a pocket of my collection where the foliage boasts of other colors, like reds, golds, and purples!
My picks: I’m still on the lookout for plants as the most readily available option, coleus or crotons, don’t appeal to me for whatever reason. Strobilanthes dyeriana (Persian shield), Oxalis triangularis (purple shamrock), Begonia rex-cultorum, Stromanthe sanguinea ‘Triostar’.
What do you think of when you imagine a plant sanctuary? Let me know in the comments.
Below are 4 images representing a draft layout for Involucrata starting from overheard and moving layer by layer through the “canopy” until we reach the “forest floor”. The 5th image represents a small green wall that may or not be included in the final piece. The current plan is for the exhibit to open early to mid June 2022.
The epiphyte layer will hover around 9-10 feet overhead. Plant list: Orchids, various species of epiphytic fern, bromeliads, tillansdsia, pothos, and jungle cactus.
The epiphyte layer will hover around 9-10 feet overhead. Plant list: Orchids, various species of epiphytic fern, bromeliads, tillansdsia, pothos, and jungle cactus. Assuming no plant casualties, I need only 1 bromeliad and 1 rhaphidophora to complete this layer! Gotta catch ’em all.
Head height and above plants. These plants will top out at 5-7 feet tall or, in the case of epiphytes, be arranged at approximately eye level. Plant list: Orchids, bromeliads, tillansdsia, palm, strelitzia, heliconia, various liana, and gunnera. Gunnera is the real wild card of this bunch and a species I expect to have real challenges working with.
Of all the plants listed in the “Head height and above” layer, I’m most excited to play with Gunnera (a.k.a. dinosaur food). I’m intimidated by its size and water requirements, but it grows to a mature size within 1-2 years as opposed to 5-8 as some of the other specimens chosen for the project. I ordered one “small” start of Gunnera manicata this week just so I can wrap my head around its needs and eccentricities.
Hip and Knee Height plants.
This layer will need the most editing and adjusting, I suspect. I worry that the feeling imparted will be claustrophobic as opposed to pleasantly encompassing. There is also a question of how much clustering of species is required to look “natural” to the eye. Would it be better to have fewer species and more of the same plant.
Groundcover plants to fill gaps.
I’m most used to growing plants in pots and concentrating on vertical growth. I have less experience trying to get plants to spread horizontally across a surface. Initials trials have been abysmal failures. Who kills a tradescantia?!
My initial idea for the central green space was to use sod fescue, my favorite grass for sitting and lounging. I may need to revisit that since sod may be sub-optimal for folks with mobility challenges.
Punk Tropicale 