A major new installation opens this weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. New York-based artist Emilie Clark‘s “My Garden Pets” – a series of fluid watercolor and graphite amalgamations of flora and fauna – explores the work of 19th-century American naturalist (and Darwin collaborator) Mary Treat. Specifically, they address the concept of ‘the beneficial insect,’ depicting acts which often go unseen by the human eye – a microscopic war between plants and insects.
Explaining the inspiration behind her work, Clark says, “When I first began using Victorian women naturalists as the point of departure for my art in 2003, I discovered an unanticipated freedom. By inserting myself into the dynamics of the work of these historical naturalists and into the worlds opened up by their lives and practices, I was able to live more fully in my own constructed world of art making – a world that, like theirs, emerges out of close observation of ambiguous objects and feeds off the constant flux between categories generated by that observation. Spores, pollen, egg sacks, hives–nature is filled with tiny worlds that are at once contained and whole and yet built or woven out of infinite parts. The role of a naturalist involves the investigation of these parts, the dismantling and the reconstruction of them.”
To create the series, Clark spent four months on site at the Garden as its first artist-in-residence, researching in its libraries and talking to BBG horticulturalists, scientists, and other staff members. Her project combines works on paper in which galls, thorns, canes, beetles, aphids, nematodes, leaves and pods flow in and out of each other, in accumulation and transformation, with an audio piece drawn from the extensive correspondences between Treat and Charles Darwin and Asa Gray. In the tradition of the natural history museum, display cases will contain a variety of plant specimens sent by Treat to Harvard University, facsimiles of original correspondence, and the artist’s mapping of her process. A Victorian terrarium and armchair will complete the installation.
The exhibition title refers to a treatise on beneficial insects penned by Treat in 1887, describing a kind of unwitting cross-species collaboration, when insects help plants survive the attacks of their predators. “’My Garden Pets’ links Treat’s specific expertise in beneficial insects to the larger institution of the scientific correspondence, exploring the ways in which Treat herself might have performed something like the role of the beneficial insect for her famous male colleagues, “ says Clark.
Asked to further describe the impact of the era’s gender divide on Treat’s work, Clark explains: “Perhaps the most emblematic example of the gender divide for women professionals during the Victorian era was that Treat was commissioned by the Brooklyn Ethical Association to write an obituary tribute to Asa Gray. Her obituary was published, but because women were not allowed to be members of the association, it was presented by a man.”
She goes on, “During Treat’s life, it was extremely difficult for a woman to pursue an academic career, say in the way that Asa Gray had. The first public university to admit women was not opened until 1884. There were only a few co-ed private colleges and a hand full of women’s colleges. Even so, women who did go to college were generally taught home economics. Treat had no formal education. Asa Gray and Charles Darwin both had received formal education and Gray remained tied to an academic position for the duration of his career. In Gray’s case, the academic affiliation afforded him all sorts of perks—libraries, research funds and assistants, academic publishing, lectures and colleagues. Darwin was independently wealthy so he was not dependent on academic affiliation. Still, his relationship to his professors at Cambridge, in addition to his class position, played a key role in every opportunity—from being invited on the Voyage of the Beagle to publishing, organization affiliations and his ability to acquire specimens.”
“Mary Treat was entirely self-taught and dependent on income from her publishing. She collected numerous specimens for Gray and Darwin, but was only given postage for her efforts. She writes in a letter to Darwin:
‘Dr. Gray asked me to publish the Sarracenia article in the American Naturalist, and you may wonder at my selecting a literary magazine rather than a scientific one, but I am wholly dependent upon my own exertions, and must go where they pay best.’
“So just as beneficial insects can help deter injurious ones, allowing plants to thrive, Treat’s extensive research and specimen collection for Asa Gray and Charles Darwin, contributed to the advancement of their theories, their knowledge, and their recognition—she helped them to thrive.”
“My Garden Pets” runs March 6th – May 23rd, and is part of The Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s 100th anniversary celebration. For more information, visit www.bbg.org.
Located at:
Steinhardt Conservancy Gallery,
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
900 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
Admission to the exhibition is free with admission to BBG: $8 for adults and $4 for senior citizens (65 and older) and students with ID. Children under 12, all school groups, and Garden members are admitted free at all times.
*Images: (from top) “Untitled, BBG-6 from My Garden Pets,” “Untitled, BBG-1 from My Garden Pets,” “Untitled, BBG-3 from My Garden Pets,” “Untitled, BBG-4 from My Garden Pets,” and “Untitled, BBG-2 from My Garden Pets.” All 2009. All watercolor, ink and graphite on paper, measuring 22″x15″.
All images courtesy of the artist, Emilie Clark.
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