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Thursday, October 04, 2012

American Society of Botanical Artists - 15th Annual Exhibition

Continuing the botanical art theme, I'm very pleased to see that the American Society of Botanical Artists have got the artwork in their Annual Exhibition online this year.

The Annual Exhibition 

Exhibition Catalogue for ASBA 15th Annual Exhibition
Brassica oleracea Ornamental Kale
Watercolor on Vellum
© Karen Kluglein
The 15th Annual Exhibition is being held at The Horticultural Society of New York at 148 W. 37th Street, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

It opened in mid September and you can see a slideshow of photos from the reception and awards ceremony on Flickr

It continues until 21st November - with gallery hours Monday - Friday, 10am to 6pm - which has got to be disappointing for those who work and don't live in New York.  The exhibition is free.

However for those who can't get to New York you can also see the artwork in this exhibition online.

An exhibition catalogue is available via the ASBA website and ArtPlantae Books  - priced at $20.

I've got the publication from the traveling exhibition Losing Paradise which came to Kew Gardens - and the reproduction and publication qualities are very good.

The Awards

This year the awards have been made as follows
  • The Horticultural Society of New York Best in Show: Silphium laciniatum Compass Plant, Watercolor on Paper by Heeyoung Kim.  I met this very accomplished artist from Illinois in the Lindley Hall in London earlier this year after she had won an RHS Gold Medal for her work. (see my blog post 7 Gold Medal Winners at RHS Botanical Art 2012 in which you can read my interview with her which details how she approaches her work.)
  • ASBA Eleanor Wunderlich Award for Excellence: Hydrangea paniculata Panicled Hydrangea, Oil on Paper by Ingrid Finnan
The judges were impressed by her ability to render white flowers on white paper in the unforgiving medium of oil paint.
  • Brooklyn Botanic Garden Award for a Print or Drawing: Carica papaya Hand-colored Aquatint Etching by Monika E. deVries Gohlke This etching was also used as the image for the exhibitions's card
  • Talas Award: Sierra Dawn Lily by John Pastoriza-Pinol
  • New York Central Art Supply AwardTasmanian Blue Gum by Leah Kaizer
  • Ursus Books and Prints AwardNorthern Red Oak and Gray Birch by Carrie Megan
  • Honorable Mentions
The Art

I guess the big difference about this exhibition, when compared to one I'm more used to (Society of Botanical Artists and the RHS), is that virtually all artists appear to be only displaying one work of art.  I'm not sure if this is "an American thing" as I've noticed this happen in other American exhibitions.  I have to say that I much prefer to see a suite of works.  That for me illustrates much more clearly the relative skills levels of different artists and also provides the scope for an artist to really shine.

The 'strictly botanical' artwork included in the exhibition came from 192 works submitted by botanical artists from the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the UK.  The jurors Patricia Jonas, Kathie Miranda, and Derek Norman selected just 43 works for the exhibition.
Works on natural vellum are becoming more prevalent, with 10 artists choosing it as their material
That means that around one quarter of the artwork selected for this exhibition was painted on vellum which is a statistic which I find quite amazing!  I guess it's maybe prompted from having some of the premier exponents of painting on vellum living in North America - such as Jean Emmons whose work is fabulous and who has two works in the show. I was fortunate to meet Jean at the 2011 RHS Botanical Art Show - see my interview with her in RHS Botanical Art Show & Five Gold Medal Winners.

Selected Artists

The selected artists are listed below.  Names in bold indicate a link to their own website; links not in bold link to the interview with the artist on the ASBA website.  Those without any link have no discernible presence online.  Where I can spot where the artist comes from I've listed this too

Do please let me know if I've got any of this wrong or there's a better website which you'd rather be linked to - my contact details are in the side column.
Workshops

Associated with the exhibition are a number of workshops.  The remaining workshops are as listed below.  I'm being very geeky here and am also including links to the pdf files of the materials lists where these are available - I know they will interest a lot of the botanical artists who read this blog!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this insightful post Katherine. I think the ASBA are so amazing with the amount of work they do to promote botanical art. I am just browsing Heeyoung's website now. I haven't looked at her work before and it's beautiful. Thank you for bringing my attention to it.

    ReplyDelete

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