La Maison des artistes visuels francophones presented Dry Media VIII: Plant Fibres on Sept. 3, an art exhibition showing works by Textile and Fibre Artists of Manitoba (TFAM) created in response to botanical specimens from the U of M’s herbarium.
Leona Herzog, a participating artist and member of TFAM, explained the group connected with the herbarium earlier this year.
“In January, [TFAM] spent two days at the herbarium studying wonderful dried specimens,” she stated.
“Then they went their merry way for about six months or so and created works of art. The works of art were then matched with the herbarium specimens in many cases, and the herbarium specimens inspired what you’re seeing on the wall.”
According to the U of M herbarium’s website, a herbarium is a collection of dried plants used for scientific study, and it documents the anatomy, molecular information and distribution of plant species. Over centuries, the collection can serve as chronological data about the environment.
The U of M herbarium was founded in 1907 and houses 85,000 specimens, making it the most comprehensive collection of vascular plants of Manitoba. It is located on the fourth floor of Buller building and is open to visitors by appointment.
The exhibit features works by twelve artists. One of the artists is Carla Zelmer, an instructor in biological sciences at U of M. Her piece, “Messages 4: Resilience,” is made of braided fibres of plants that are undesirable but hardy, such as dandelion, stinging nettle and milkweed.
“They contain very strong fibres, and so my piece represents those moments when supports for something have broken,” she commented.
“It’s showing the resilience of the plant world, and especially these particular plants, to start again, come up from the roots […] It’s spreading out, and it will survive.”
Herzog’s “August Companions,” on the other hand, is a contemporary embroidery piece about plants that grow together in an area around Marathon, Ontario.
For Zelmer, one highlight is finding a plant specimen in the herbarium that was collected in the same year of her birth, while Herzog discovered the moss genus Herzogiella, likely named after someone who shared her last name.
“Herbaria worldwide are under threat. They hold our history of what was there. A lot of plants that are in our collections are now a parking lot. They don’t even exist anymore. Their DNA is still there, and we have evidence that they were there,” said Zelmer.
“With climate change, some of our plants are going to be heading north, and they may not exist in the way that they were before, and [herbaria allow] us to track what’s happened as well.”
Despite their importance, Zelmer noted that the value of herbaria is not always recognized.
“A lot of people are not aware of how useful they are to science and to many other things like art because they’re often hidden away and people don’t get to see them,” Zelmer said. “This is one aspect of bringing [these important collections] into the public eye.”
“Artists can take all of that information […] and do something that is visually exciting, and make people interested in learning more and in preservation,” Herzog added.
Herzog hopes the exhibit will cultivate more love and care for the environment and raise awareness moving forward.
“I think that will go a long way to help us preserve what we have and gain back some of what we’ve lost,” she said.
Dry Media VIII: Plant Fibres is on display until Sept. 19. Visit maisondesartistes.mb.ca/contact/ for gallery hours.
