SEED MAN

SEE \ DY. adj. [from seed.] Abounding with seed.

Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

On the "List of the Unexpected" Dr. Arno Klein's masthead for his website (www.binarybottle.com) must rank somewhere.  It is a line-up of head shots of 11 years of his Halloween costumes.  These, coupled with his work labeling the human brain, make an odd but not disturbing combination.

The costume that I am concerned with is that of Seed Man - a far more benign looking persona than Dog Food Man. With the help of his costumiere, Deepanjana, Arno was topped with a hat of acorn caps, seeds were glued to his face, and a garland of acorn caps was strung around his neck.
I have admired this portrait for several years and decided to add it to my Herbarium wall between Green Man and Moss Covered Me.  Normally I don't work from photographs but in this case I had no choice. When the drawing was almost complete I came to the opinion that it looked like the photo but somehow had gone boring.  After pondering the problem I realized my only hope for rescuing the image might be to paste seeds on part of it.

The combination I use of watercolor and color pencil is confusing to many viewers who can't identify the medium.  This work takes the problem a step farther by combining the real with the unreal yet blending them so that at a slight distance everything appears unified.

The frame for this drawing is from the collection of my cousin Carol's husband, Lee.  In the four corners I glued glass acorns which have real acorn tops - another unexpected combination.

BIRD TEMPLE #1

The average weight of a hen's egg is 2 ounces.  The shell weighs on an average 12% of the total weight of the egg and is made of a calcareous, porous substance, pervious to air, water and smells.

The vitellus, or egg yolk of the egg (30% of the total weight), is an opaque, soft substance which congeals in the heat.

Larousse Gastronomique, first American edition (1961)

I have read and re-read The Birds by Aristophanes.  Things are lurking there that continue to intrigue me.  I have copied out all of the songs the birds sing and assembled them into something that looks like a poem.  I have noted the species of birds referred to on another list, with no particular purpose in mind.  I have extracted pages of quotes describing the creation of the world and the importance of birds.

The birds build a city in the air between the earth and heaven, thereby interrupting transmission of the sacrifices humans are making to the gods, which gains them great power.  The text does not describe temples in the city but I assume they are there - Greek temple bird houses.

For me actually building temples would mean learning a new skill set that includes machinery for which I have no room. When I saw my first vintage clock case without a clock I knew it was the answer. There was the perfect size dwelling with a round entryway.  Ebay is full of them!  Often they already have columns, like a proper temple.  Cases without clocks are basically sold for parts and if they are not in great shape they can be very inexpensive.

The decor of the first temple was inspired by the ancient Vietnamese technique of veneering surfaces with egg shells.  What could be more appropriate?  In the 1920's and 30's, when labor was cheaper, eggshell veneers, Coquilles d'Oeuf, were applied to all manner of objects. 
It is not difficult,  just tedious : collect eggshells, remove their interior membranes, let them dry, crush them and, in this case, paste the chards directly to the gessoed surface of a clock case.

When the surface was covered it was left to dry throughly, sanded, varnished and lightly sanded again.  The effect is like craquelure on an oil painting.

The inside of the case became an egg yolk with drawings of molecules of some of its components: oleic acid, phosolipid, vitamins A, D and E, cholesterol, Palmitic Acid, xanthophyll and  protein.




White feathers sewn to a piece of felted material act as a rug for the floor and a cushion for 3 tiny nests.  One nest was found on a street in Ann Arbor by Hetsy Slote and another was abandoned by a phoebe on the property of Megan Parry in New York State.  The third has been around so long its history has faded.

When the temple finds its home in the room it will probably be on top of one of the bird cabinets that are in progress.  It may demand additional work at that time.  For now it is awaiting a resident or three.

MY MOTHER'S PILLOW

The proper order of things is often a mystery to me.  You, too?

The Cheshire Cat (as quoted by Lewis Carroll)

The contents of my cabinet fall into different categories.
Beyond my making drawings and books, the room has acted as a magnet for so many of the possessions I have acquired over my lifetime. I am regularly surprised to find something more, unrecognized,  lurking on a shelf or in a drawer, that belongs there.

Other elements being added are objects created by artists whose work I admire.

Another category is the representation of people who are important to me for personal reasons - for instance, the drawing of my father as the Green Man.

My mother's contribution turns out to be a pillow she did in needlepoint which I inherited and put in our living room on a chair.  The image of a cat is particularly appealing.  It was made from a kit so it is not original to her but the time she spent and the pleasure she got from making it were unique to her.  Whenever I look at it I remember when it sat on her couch and I can go back in time to the house she loved.  Recently that pillow migrated from my living room to sit on a chair in the cabinet where it now lives with the birds in a peaceable kingdom.

POTATOES

MASHED POTATOES LUXEMBOURGEOISE
Mash potatoes in butter, and red wine instead of milk.

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, 1954

My fourth, and perhaps final, cook book for the Herbarium goes underground:  The dusty potato, native of the Andes, is paired with elegant examples of marbleized paper.  As an element in cooking there are few more universal foods.  Included are recipes from Peru, Brazil, India, Belgium, England and the United States.

FURNITURE

Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.

Fran Lebowitz

There are rare moments in life when a problem is solved with less effort than predicted.
Wandering around Haberman's Fabrics in Royal Oak, on a completely different mission, I found myself faced with the perfect fabric for the chairs in the cabinet room.  It was so amazing that I was actually reluctant to buy it and took home a small sample to ponder. It seemed too easy.  Luckily when I came to my senses and rushed back it was still there.  Of course only 15 minutes had elapsed since I left the store.

COOKBOOKS

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be engaged in lightly.

M.F.K. Fisher

We all have our own way of making sense of the world.
When I took history in school it was almost impossible for me to get a grip on it.  Numbers fly out of my head almost as soon as they enter, so learning dates was a really difficult task with only temporary success.  I have little or no interest in monarchy and the wars people have engaged in make me frantic with disbelief. History of Art was the first thing that held my attention and started to organize my view of time lines.   When on my own, I discovered the history of gardening and food and since then the world has been in better focus.

When I started thinking about my Herbarium I  felt that the practical aspects of plants were as important  to me as the scientific.  For those of us who are in charge of preparing meals, and enjoy the task, ingredients take on a special pleasure.  I decided to approach my favorite cooks in search of recipes that included specific fruits and vegetables.  So far we have done homage to the Plum, the Pear and the Peach. The cook books all have the same square format.  Each has a unifying visual theme and pertinent quote as opening text.  Endsheets are old woodcut images of the fruit in question from Gerard's Herbal.  Eight varieties of the fruit are pictured in original drawings,  complementing eight recipes.  Each edition has thirty-two copies.  Copy number one is destined for a shelf in the Herbarium.

The book of PLUMS was the first in this series and was inspired by our son Barrett's great praise of a plum dumpling that he enjoyed in Wurzburg, Germany.  That recipe coupled with the plum cake  made by my grandmother, Alma Borchert, was a great start for the project.

The book of PEARS was published the following year.  Eight varieties of the fruit are pictured with eight different kinds of insects.

The book of PEACHES is based on design elements typical of different countries or cultures as shown in the Grammar of Ornament which was originally published in 1856.

SEEDS

The Vine arises from her Mother's Juice:

When feeble Plants or tender Flow'rs decay,

They to their Seed their Images convey.

Matthew Prior

The drawer in the Herbarium contains a collection of seeds that originally were acquired for purposes of drawing.  The little glass containers with plastic lids they are stored in were rescued from the trash at the American Museum of Natural History by our son, Barrett.  The bottles retain the information that was taped to them by the ichthyology department and plant information has been added if known.  There are a few seedpods that wander around the drawer awaiting a bottle big enough to suit them but not so tall that the drawer won't close.

Along with loose seeds there are packets brought from Linnaeus's garden in Uppsala by Susan Smith and Michael Schuck, black morning glories in a Christmas card from Wanda Miller, bluebonnets from the Johnson Library in Austin, a collection from Nancy Korda's B&B garden in Silverton, Oregon, lettuce from Villandry brought home by Val Overholt, and exotic gourds brought from the festival in their honor in Lapeer, Michigan, by Liz Cheslock. Vintage products include a box for nasturtiums and a package of belladonna leaves.

 

It is obvious that very early people understood the purpose of seeds or there would never have been the development of agriculture.  The first great botanist who wrote something significant about seeds was Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603) a student of Luca Ghini.

In his great work, De plantis libri xvi, plants were not just listed alphabetically but were ordered by their reproductive systems -  their seeds and fruit.  This was, of course, too simple a system to be truly accurate but it did move the field of taxonomy forward.