Home to formal gardens, oak and redwood forests, and various exotic plantings, Montalvo's horticultural diversity serves as inspiration for a series of new works created by Lucas Artist Fellows Kija Lucas, Monica Lundy, Hector Dionicio Mendoza, and Fieldworks Collaborative (Trena Noval and Ann Wettrich).
Identifying, collecting, and documenting various specimens of plant life discovered while exploring Montalvo's 175-acre public park, these artists have adopted creative processes that resemble the activities of the backyard naturalist. Through sculpture, painting, photography, and works on paper, viewers are invited to reflect on the ill-defined boundary between the natural and unnatural, and the intimate entanglement between human history and the landscapes that surround us.
Identifying, collecting, and documenting various specimens of plant life discovered while exploring Montalvo's 175-acre public park, these artists have adopted creative processes that resemble the activities of the backyard naturalist. Through sculpture, painting, photography, and works on paper, viewers are invited to reflect on the ill-defined boundary between the natural and unnatural, and the intimate entanglement between human history and the landscapes that surround us.
Image Gallery
Meet the Artists
Curatorial Materials
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Curatorial Statement: Botanica Poetica
The works created for Botanica Poetica recall and critique the pictorial conventions of botanical illustration, plein air painting, and the herbarium—as well as earlier antecedents like the Wunderkammer and botanical photography. Seen together, these works critically explore the ways in which natural and cultural ecologies and discourses intersect, overlap, and sometimes collide. Read More >> |
Related Events
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Pop Up Plein Air: Art Escapists
On Sunday, September 27, amateur and professional artists from around the Bay Area gathered together on Montalvo’s grounds for an afternoon of interdisciplinary plein air art-making. This album, created by San Francisco photographer Airyka Rockefeller, captures some highlights from the special afternoon when Montalvo became an outdoor artist studio. Read More >> |
Related Videos
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Botanica Poetica: Hector Mendoza & White Wilderness
On Friday, September 25, we open a new exhibition in our Project Space Gallery: Botanica Poetica, which showcases new work by Lucas Artist Fellows inspired by the varied and diverse plant life found in Montalvo Arts Center’s 175-acre public park. Among the featured artists is Mexico-born Hector Dionicio Mendoza, currently based in Monterey, California. Read More >> |
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Monica Lundy: Portrait of an Oak Tree
The botanical theme of Lundy’s newest body of work, created while she was a Fellow at the Lucas Artists Program, seems at first glance to be a radical departure for the artist. Indeed, the artist has talked at length about how exchanging her normal studio space in urban Oakland for the natural setting of Montalvo served as a creative stimulus. Read More >> |
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A Ramble with Fieldworks
Fieldworks Collaborative was founded in 2012 by Trena Noval and Ann Wettrich to invent new approaches to creative inquiry and collaborative systems that explore the world we live in. Informed by place, we are interested in stimulating curiosity by creating inclusive, interdisciplinary, and multidimensional experiences. Read More >> |
Related Press
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Saratoga: Montalvo's Horticultural Diversity is on Display
By Khalida Sarwari, The Mercury News The idea behind the exhibit, titled “Botanica Poetica,” said curator Donna Conwell, is to showcase the work of Montalvo’s artists in residence and show how they’ve been inspired by nature, specifically Montalvo’s landscapes, on their hikes or walks around the grounds. “You get a lot of really interesting threads coming out of this observation of the natural world … ideas of human impact on our environment and climate change,” Conwell said. Read More >> |
