Object Lesson: Carlotta Corpron and Edward Weston
During a week when NOMA’s team looks toward our permanent collection for examples of plant life and floral beauty, it may seem strange to focus on the humble cabbage. Carlotta Corpron’s Nature Dancer, however, elevates leaves of Chinese cabbage out of the kitchen and into our imaginations. The sense of motion is incredible, and at… Read More
Object Lesson: Cypress Trees by Richard Misrach
In the late 1970s, Richard Misrach produced a group of photographs in Louisiana that made dramatic use of long exposures and stroboscopic lighting. Here, the intermittent blasts of light on the row of cypress trees obliterate the detail of the trunks and transform a set of rough, textured surfaces into a group of smooth vertical… Read More
Object Lesson: Dogwood Display II by Alma W. Thomas
“I say everyone on earth should take note of the spring, coming back every year, blooming and gorgeous.” —Alma W. Thomas In Alma Thomas’s painting Dogwood Display II, a rainbow of color ripples beneath streaks of white paint, recalling the bursting blossoms of a dogwood tree, or white clouds shimmering in the sky on a… Read More
Art-Making Activity: Blooming and Becoming
New Orleans artist Ron Bechet creates large-scale paintings and drawings inspired by the Southern Louisiana landscape. This charcoal work For My Fathers is based on twisted and tangled roots of live oaks in City Park. The more you look, new shapes and forms can emerge, sharing deeper ideas about emotions and human experiences. Take a… Read More
Object Lesson: Rubber Plant by Imogen Cunningham
Although Imogen Cunningham’s earliest photographs were soft-focused, often ethereal studies of friends presented as allegories, she would become best known for images such as this one, which presented forms in nature or the human body as richly descriptive statements of fact. Trained as a chemist at the University of Washington, Cunningham also went on to… Read More
Lesson Plan: Botanical Journal
Artists and scientists rely upon careful observations to discover and represent new ideas. The deft eye and trained hand of the visual artist can help us all to realize the intricacies of the natural world. In botanical journals, naturalists drew the leaves, stems, root systems, fruits and flowers of the plants they encountered so that… Read More