The University of St. Thomas is hosting an art exhibit that features two artists with ties to Cook County. Botanical Art in All Its Wonder has the intricate work of Nancy Hemstad Seaton, like the stunning glass piece on the left. Above: It also includes the wonderful fiber artwork of former Hovland resident Jo Wood.
An exhibition of finely detailed botanical art created by seven regional artists – one from Grand Marais – is on display through May 24 at the University of St. Thomas.
Botanical Art in All Its Wonder is free and open to the public; it can be viewed in the O’Shaughnessy Educational Center lobby gallery on the university’s St. Paul campus.
Shelly Nordtorp-Madson, the Art History Department faculty member who curated the exhibition, explained that botanical art is generally defined as photographically realistic depictions of plant forms. “However, that definition can be too narrow,” she said. “Other artists also portray floral and horticultural motifs, sometimes extremely accurately and at other times giving the bare visual minimum to identify the subjects as plants. These creators can choose other media, or set themselves other limitations or challenges, whether it is the medium, the elements of the composition or the colors.”
A goal of the exhibition is to look at the variety of styles and media that can be used to portray the world of flora. Media used in the 50-plus works on display include painting, drawing, printmaking and fused glass. Some of the artists work outdoors, and some in studios, but according to Nordtorp-Madson, each piece requires many hours of painstaking labor.
Nancy Hemstad Seaton, who resides on Hungry Jack Lake, is one of the featured artists. Her work depicts “the intricacies of a dragonfly wing or a mouse’s view of a flower.” She paints with watercolor on both sides of vellum paper, which provides interesting spatial characteristics, and more recently is working with glass as a medium.
In her artist statement, Hemstad Seaton explained her thoughts while creating, “What do I remember when I close my eyes and think about a birch leaf falling in the wind? What do I feel when I think about blueberries? This is what I create: the emotion, the joy, the color of my memory.”
Another artist with local ties is former Hovland resident, Jo Wood, who now lives in Duluth. In her artist statement, Wood wrote, “Making art while living in Northern Minnesota for over 20 years gave me time to know its shorelines, forest trails, and gardens where flowers gesture, trees reach, water moves. A woman once told me, ‘I could just walk right into that piece.’ My intention is to make art that nourishes mind and spirit through our shared connection with the natural world.”
Other featured artists are Marian-Ortold Bagley of Minneapolis; Stephanie Hunder of Hudson, Wis.; Charles Lyon of Minneapolis; Sandra Muzzy of Minneapolis; and Anna Rosenthal of Winsted.
For more information about the exhibit, call (651) 962-5560.
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