WILD TREASURES: OREGON’S NATIVE PLANTS IN CONTEMPORARY BOTANICAL ART 

2020 Dorothy R. Peck Award

Janet Parker on behalf of Oregon Botanical Artists

Our group, Oregon Botanical Artists (OBA), was awarded the Dorothy R. Peck grant in October 2020 for the project, Wild Treasures—Oregon’s Native Plants in Contemporary Botanical Art. OBA is an ASBA Artists’ Circle. The group was formed with five members in November 2012, and today, we have approximately 50 members.

Project Goals:

An art exhibition in Portland focused on Oregon native plant species had long been our dream. Our project began to take shape in 2019 in discussions with OBA member Carol Stepick, who worked with us to draft proposals for two important grants that we received. These proposals also helped provide valuable structure to our evolving plans.

The initial core team comprised Aislinn Adams, Alice Fredericy, Dorota Haber-Lehigh, Janet Parker, and Carol Putnam. Janet spearheaded the project, provided the vision and leadership to bring it to fruition, and designed the catalog. Aislinn tirelessly worked to involve outside groups. Alice created our dedicated Instagram account and launched and managed a successful GoFundMe campaign. In addition to contributing much to the vision of the exhibition along the way, Dorota also kept her eye on our budget. Carol Putnam was indispensable as our copy editor, proofreader, and constant volunteer for so many other necessary tasks. Our newer team members, Kay French, and Kate Simonson helped, respectively, with managing volunteers in sustaining a social media campaign, and recruiting helpers as the exhibition’s opening date drew near. Staff and volunteers at Oregon Society of Artists enthusiastically embraced this project from the beginning and we are grateful for their partnership and support.

Our specific project goals were:

1) to learn more about our native plants;

2) to exhibit our work now and create a catalog record of it for the future; and

3) to connect people to botanical art, to native plants, and to each other.

The people we sought to connect were botanical artists, botanists, local indigenous American communities, gardeners, native plant nurseries, food growers, hikers, mushroom collectors—and any other environmentally-concerned group, organization, or individual.

Our Achievements:

These included the exhibition, a reception with symposium, field trips, wildflower hikes, a catalog, special presentations, and new connections.

The Exhibition: The show represented the work of 26 artists and included 47 drawings and paintings in a variety of different media. The artists were affiliated with Oregon Botanical Artists (OBA), Pacific Northwest Botanical Artists (PNBA), The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI), and Oregon Society of Artists (OSA), our venue partner.

Along with the artwork on display, we included interpretive panels in the exhibition to answer these questions: What are native plants, and why are they so important? What is an invasive plant, and how do they cause harm? What is the difference between Botanical Art and Botanical Illustration? We also provided some guidelines for practicing Botanical Art without causing ecological damage.

Acceptance in the show required the artists to write a short summary of their experiences with their subject(s). The summaries, included in the catalog, could be about the plant itself, its significance for the artist, the process of drawing or painting it, or anything else the artist felt was important and wanted to share. Reading about their experiences greatly enriched the catalog record of the project.

The Reception with Symposium: Approximately 100 people came to the reception. This number of attendees was remarkable because, due to the changing COVID-19 situation, we didn’t know until the last minute if we would even be able to have an in-person reception. The opening event included the announcement of seven award recipients.

But more than an art exhibition, we also wanted to create an event which could include like-minded people and organizations to share their points of view about native plants. For example, today we know more about indigenous peoples’ sophisticated methods for tending this land for 10,000 years before the arrival of European “settlers.” Our symposium panelists included:

Greg Archuleta, an elder of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.* Greg is an artist who teaches about the culture and history of the Tribes of Western Oregon, including ethnobotany, Native art design, and more. He is a member of the Clackamas Chinook, Santiam Kalapuya, and Shasta tribes. With a particular focus on native plants, he talked about Indigenous peoples’ historic and contemporary uses of prescribed burns to help prevent destructive wildfire by ridding a forest of dead leaves, tree limbs, and other debris, and thereby fostering the growth of native plants.

Lynda Boyer, a seed specialist who manages the restoration and maintenance of more than 300 acres of oak, prairie, and riparian habitat on Heritage Seedling properties in the Willamette Valley also agreed to be a panelist at the reception. Lynda is a boots-on-the-ground ecologist involved in the conservation and restoration of habitat, and an advocate for learning about and utilizing native plants as much as possible. As she says, “the best advocacy comes from knowledge—we cannot take care of what we cannot see.”

Special Presentations: We wanted people to hear from our area botanical artists. Aislinn Adams is an Irish botanical artist living in Salem, Oregon who spoke about her discovery that many plants native to the Pacific Northwest had been introduced into Ireland through the collections of the 18th-century Scottish plant collector, David Douglas. Janene Walkky, our OBA president at the time, delivered a presentation on a rare Camas meadow/Garry oak habitat and her efforts to help save it from the ravages of a proposed mining project. Along with a special presentation on prescribed burns by Greg Archuleta, each week in August one of these three presentations was delivered in person at the Oregon Society of Artists (OSA), our venue partner in the project.

Catalog: With the help of ASBA’s Dorothy R. Peck grant, we were able to produce a 76-page, professional-quality exhibition catalog.

Wildflower Hike and Field Trips: Matt Palmquist, a forest ranger at Silver Falls State Park near Salem, led our members on a guided wildflower hike in May, and Lory Duralia, owner of Bosky Dell Native Plant Nursery, provided guided tours of the nursery in the spring and in mid-August during the exhibition.

New Connections: 

We made new connections with (in no particular order):

• Kate Brown, Oregon’s Governor
• Matt Palmquist, Silver Falls State Park Ranger
• Andrew Beckman, Timber Press Executive Editor
• Ted Labbe, owner of Urban Green Spaces Institute
• Greg Archuleta, Elder of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde
• Lory Duralia, owner of Bosky Dell Native Plant Nursery
• Lynda Boyer, Specialist in Habitat Restoration and Heritage Seeds
• John Savage, President of Native Plant Society of Oregon (NPSO), Willamette Valley chapter
• Randy Gragg, Executive Director of Portland Parks Foundation
• Frances Stilwell, Botanical Artist and author
• Jordan Uth, Salem-based Native Plant Florist
• Nicole Yasuhara, Curator, Oregon Historical Society

*The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon includes over 30 tribes and bands from western Oregon, northern California, and southwest Washington. For more information, visit: https://www.grandronde.org/