The Horticultural Society of New York is awesome.  The Horticultural society of New York makes New York city better through horticultural programs, library resources and exhibitions. Below are some photos of the exhibitions held in HSNY:



Above: Sustainable fashion Show - Bodkin-  Eviana Hartman uses recycled tire rubber as buttons, boiled carob dyes, bamboo/organic cotton, organic wool,  recycled polyester fleece.


Above: The Artificial Kingdom - art exhibition by Rowena Dring and Jude Miller


Above: Awesome indoor green wall at HSNY

June 11, 2009

Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh was founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants.  Nearly 34,000 plants are grown at the Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and its three smaller offshoots located in other parts of Scotland.  These represent nearly 17,000 different species from all over the world, or about 7% of all known plant species.  I was surprised to see so many species of plants at the same time!

May 29, 2009

Osias Beert the Elder
Still-Life with Cherries and Strawberries in China Bowls
1608 Oil on panel
19 5/8” x 25 3/4”

One of my favorite Flemish vanitas paintings is “Still Life with wild Strawberries” by Osias Beert the Younger. Vanitas is a type of still life painting popular in Northern Europe in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 16th - 17th centuries. The word “vanitas” is Latin, meaning “emptiness” and loosely translated corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. Paintings executed in the vanitas style are meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure and the certainty of death.




Osias Beert the Younger
Still Life with Wild Raspberries
Oil on Panel
11.2” x 15.6”

STILL LIFES WITH FLOWERS

Pieter Brueghel the Younger
Still Life with Flowers
1601-1678





Jan the Elder Brueghel
1607 Oil on wood
98 x 73 cm





Brueghel Jan the Elder
Still Life with flowers in a Glass

May 26, 2009

Scottish Highlands area is an amazing and magical place that is definitely not from this world.  Steep bare mountains,  strong winds, rainfall , swampy grasslands and many waterfalls, they hide one of the strangest animals -  Kyloe.

Kyloe or Highland Cow is an ancient Scottish breed of beef cattle with long horns and long wavy pelts.  ( They look a lot like mammoths or at least like giant,big headed, hairy cows)  Highland cows are known are a hardy breed due to the rugged nature of their native Scottish Highlands, they graze on plants many other cattle avoid.






Other inhabitants of the Highlands are lots and lots of sheep.  Sheep is everywhere. 

May 23, 2009

May 09, 2009

Pando is a clonal colony of a single male Quaking Aspen located in the state of Utah, U.S.  All trees in Pando colony are determined to be part of a single living organism with same genetic material and one massive underground root system. The plant is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000 tonnes making it the heaviest known organism and with the oldest root system known in existence at ~80,000 years of age.

April 23, 2009

Kusamono and shitakusa are a potted collection of plants. Plants used are typically moss, grass, lichen, small mountain flowers and plants, bonsai trees, bamboo, or bulbs, that may be arranged to heighten the beauty or reflect a certain season.  Usually a collection is displayed separately in special pots, driftwood, or even stones. Photos from beautiful blogs: Shitakusamono and Happy Hearts at Home.

April 22, 2009

       

Terraskin,  Via Stone and Fiberstone are tree-free papers made of minerals.  Stone paper is similar to traditional papers only it has a lot of advantages. When it comes to printing Via Stone paper uses 20-30% less ink than conventional papers.  Stone paper can be water-resistant, tear-resistant, recyclable and biodegradable.  No water or bleach can be used in its production as well!

April 21, 2009

Love the idea!!

Sycamore is one of the species of Platanus native to North America. It has been extensively planted in New York City as a shade tree. It can easily endure the big city environment, bears transplanting well and grows rapidly.

April 13, 2009

So it snowed a lot a couple of days ago in Brooklyn. Then, it became increasingly warm, snow melted and these first white flowers appeared. Photos are taken in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.

March 15, 2009

I love Charley Harper’s print, The Desert. 

Beautiful ceramic plates inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s biological drawings (book named Art Forms in Nature) by Megha Patel.



*above:  Ernst Haeckel’s book “Art Forms in Nature”

March 07, 2009

Benjamin Hemmendinger
Clouds
2009
Lithograph

Ben Hemmendinger graduated from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He is really good at painting clouds and his mom, Gail Kort, is a professional cloud painter.  I believe Benjamin painted only clouds for a year or two while studying at Cooper (although I could be wrong).
Now Benjamin resides in upstate New York.
(This posting is created by me, Anastasia Ugorskaya, watercolor/drawing artist and Cooper Union graduate)

March 05, 2009

Today is a snow storm in Brooklyn.  Speaking about snow storms, artist Amy Bennett constructs paintings where houses, villages, roads and trees look small, like tiny toy models.  In a lot of her artwork, snow is taking over.  Amy writes that her art is a lot about isolation and quietness and by transitioning her models into winter, seemed to fortify these senses. 

March 02, 2009

Vija Celmins
Untitled (Big Sea #2)
1969
graphite on acrylic ground on paper
33 1/2 x 44 in.

I love Vija Celmins drawings of the surface of the ocean.
“Vija Celmins immigrated to the United States with her family from Latvia when she was ten years old. She and her family settled in Indiana. Celmins received international attention early in her career for her renditions of natural scenes, often painted from photographs lacking a point of reference, horizon, or discernible depth of field.” “Celmins’s work demonstrates a remarkably close engagement with the natural world mediated by photography. Celmins has said her images dispel romantic notions of the sublime in nature.” - Wiki

February 18, 2009

Amy Ross’ drawings, watercolors and collages have a surreal effect.  The drawings are rendered in the style of scientific illustration . It is not easy to distinguish at the first glance where the leg of the mushroom starts and the leg of a human being begins. People’s heads are morphed with mushroom legs and birds are actually flower buds on magnolia trees - Amy plays with similarities and differences of nature’s shapes.



 
Amy Ross
Legshroom With Bird
2008
collage on paper
10 x 8 inches

Bullfinch (Снегирь, snegir)  is a small bird with big round red belly that lives across Europe and Asia.  It is widespread in Russia and one can spot lots of them in Moscow city around winter time. Bullfinch birds travel from Siberia to warmer climate of Moscow during winter.  They eat mostly red Rowan berries that keep hanging in multiples on Rowan trees even in coldest days. It is quite beautiful to see many red birds around red Rowan berries juxtaposed on the winter snow.  Birds look like huge red berries lost in many little ones.  I even think that is why the word red in Russian comes from the word beautiful.
I found this ceramic cup that definitely has a watercolor of bullfinch bird on it by Helen Beard, ceramicist and a watercolor artist from England:

February 14, 2009

I love California quails and quails in general. This is what is it says on wikipedia about California quails: “The California Quail is a highly sociable bird that often gathers in small flocks and one of the daily communal activities is the taking of dust baths. A group of quail will select an area where the ground has been newly turned or is soft, and using their underbellies, will burrow downward into the soil some 1-2 inches. They then wriggle about in the indentations they have created, flapping their wings and ruffling their feathers, causing dust to rise in the air.” (so cute!!!) 

SEVEN DAYS SEVEN NIGHTS is a title of the show in Gagosian Gallery, NY and series of gelatin silver prints by Hiroshi Sugimoto.  Photographs in the show are of the sea and its horizon in locations all over the world. The photographs are taken different in time of the day and with different exposure time. All the photographs have remarkable sense of stillness and eternity. The ocean is still and seems as though it is floating in space and we are floating with it.  Hiroshi returns to the same subject repeatedly to reveal the “subtleties that he finds in the primordial sea, site of the origin and emergence of life as well as of eternal continuity”.
Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo. In 1970 he moved to Los Angeles to study photography at the Art Center College of Design. Now he lives and works in New York City and Tokyo.

February 13, 2009

Me and Paul are planning on bike touring Scotland this spring.  Exciting!

February 07, 2009

I just found this interview with Graham Hill, the founder of Treehugger.com about Planet Green! Elephant journal says: “Years ago, back in the dark days of pre-Green Fad-dom (2004)<—:):), our smoggy future looked black. Four years later, Green is the new Black. (!!!!!) ”

February 01, 2009

I always liked how New York City tap water tastes like.Tap’dNY is a new bottled water company based out of New York that sells…....New York City tap water!. actually, New York City water is not that bad since it travels to the city from Adirondack mountains and beautiful pure lakes upstate.  TAP’DNY get water from NYC’s public water system, purifies it through reverse osmosis and bottles it locally. This saves miles of ridiculous transportation.
New York City also had a campaign not long ago called Get Your Fill encouraging New Yorkers try to drink tap water all around the city and they even gave out NYC reusable tap water bottles!


You can read NYC drinking water supply and quality report here: Drinking NYC Water Supply and Quality Report

January 28, 2009

This ia a drawing of a tree by Amy Talluto. Amy draws and paints a lot of trees, forest and nature landscapes. 

January 26, 2009

Speaking of houses with grass roofs…this peculiar boat-house is not only floating on the water but also has a green lawn backyard on the roof. It is located in Amsterdam and is a living example of the hippie times that swept through Holland in 60’s-80’s as one Dutch friend of mine pointed out.  Not only you are not wasting any fertile soil for the ground of your house, but also multiplying the amount of oxygen released by greens by growing them on the roof. Some will argue with me that this is not too hippie. Then, how about the house below?  I believe the owner is growing some very important kinds of weeds….

January 24, 2009

Andrew Wyeth’s watercolors are so detailed and realistic. My favorite part about his paintings are the tiniest grasses and hairs that are visible.  Not a lot of people can master this technique.
On January 16, 2009, Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep at his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, after a brief illness. He was 91 years old

January 16, 2009

I love Ptarmigans. Ptarmigans are sedentary species, breeding across arctic and subarctic Eurasia and North America. The Ptarmigan is seasonally camouflaged; its feathers moult from white in winter to brown in spring or summer. Ptarmigan’s feet are fully feathered to maintain body heat and to act as snowshoes during winter.

January 14, 2009

Drawing of a naked tree in the winter. Watercolor, pencil and graphite on paper.

January 08, 2009