Wednesday 18 May 2022

Botanical Art Worldwide 2025

 

Greetings and a Happy International Botanical Art Day!

The American Society of Botanical Artists has announced their intention to hold a second collaborative exhibition in May 2025.  May 18th was declared International Botanical Art Day at the time of the first Worldwide exhibition in 2018 when 26 countries across the world held simultaneous art exhibitions - and many countries have continued to celebrate this day each year.

South Africa again plans to be part of this exciting initiative in 2025 and we have attached below preliminary details regarding the theme so that BAASA members can start planning their art works. We have no further details at this stage, but members will be kept advised as further information becomes available.

We will start looking for a suitable venue for the exhibition, an organizing committee and a dramatic logo. You have two horticultural years to do research and select stunning subjects to illustrate. Be aware of the exciting stories that go with the crop plants you select.

Artworks will need to go through a selection process, to ensure a high standard.

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Theme for 2025: Crop Diversity/Crop Heritage: heritage varieties of useful cultivated crop plants, focusing on edibles, but also including those used for textiles, building, energy, and medicine. The theme would draw attention to the vast variety of food and useful plants in the world compared to the few varieties in mass cultivation.

Our heritage of useful plants has been passed to us for safekeeping, and it is up to us to pass them on to future generations:

    • Useful crops: but not those used in modern, large scale monocultural agriculture.
    • Crop wild relatives: wild species that can be hybridized with cultivated crops to impart a new characteristic to the cultivated crop, or that are foraged wild plants.
    • Ancient crops: those that have been cultivated for hundreds or thousands of years in the same form.

Hybrids are eligible – many food crops are hybridized, and many are species but cultivars of those species.

BAASA Gauteng
18 May 2022


Saturday 14 May 2022

Botanical Art Masterclass with Mieko Ishikawa 4 - 8 September 2022


Mieko Ishikawa and her translator and assistant Akiko Enokido, will be travelling from Japan to South Africa to attend the opening ceremony of the Grootbos Florilegium, after which they will hold a 5-day master class in botanical art.  

This is an amazing opportunity to learn from a brilliant botanical artist/teacher who is revered in Japan, coupled with the whole experience of the diversity of native plants on the estate.  The new Hannarie Wenhold Botanical Art Gallery with the original artworks of the Grootbos Florilegium will be on display. 

 

If you or someone you know may be interested in coming to this course at Grootbos, please contact Ruth Crichton ruth@grootbos.co.za for bookings.

 

For those who want to come but have alternative accommodation, the tuition fee is all they will have to pay.


Further queries - contact Vicki Thomas at bulbin@iafrica.com