At Riverside Gardens, art imitates nature

By ASHLEY LUTHERN

The works will be used in research at the Hunt Institute.

YOUNGSTOWN — Seventy-one pieces of art created by 51 artists from 12 countries are all in one downtown location: Fellows Riverside Gardens.

The gardens, located off McKinley Avenue, are hosting the 12th International Exhibition of Botanical Art on loan from the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The exhibit is displayed in the gardens’ visitor center in Weller Gallery and will run until July 20.

“We have a working relationship with the Hunt, and this traveling exhibit encourages artists to continue producing beautiful and challenging pieces of artwork with botany as the subject,” said Ellen Speicher, assistant horticultural director.

Part of the reason that the artwork is exceptionally detailed is because the works will be used in research at the institute, she said.

“A lot of these artworks in this exhibit were done in consultation with botanists and will be reproduced in scientific magazines,” said James White, art curator at the Hunt Institute.

The institute does not take applications from artists, but rather invites artists to submit photographs of original work, he said.

For Dick Raun, an artist from Connecticut whose work is featured in this year’s traveling exhibit, the fifth time was the charm for his paintings being selected.

“I got turned down four times until I was finally accepted this time around,” Raun said. “Getting the Hunt’s exhibit for people like myself who are botanical artists, it’s like getting an Oscar.”

The majority of the art, including Raun’s, was done with watercolors, but the exhibit displays work done using other media and features varying plant subjects.

“I use a dissecting scope to look at the plants very closely, and the detail is so beautiful, but no one glancing at the plant would see or appreciate it. That’s why my paintings are enlargements of the plant to scale,” Raun said.

The traveling exhibit is just one of the gallery displays the gardens will host this year, said Keith Kaiser, horticultural director at FRG.

“We usually have about seven different gallery displays a year,” he said. “Art and nature go hand in hand, and they really relate to each other because here we try to plant art.”

This year, the planted art that workers at the gardens have created has more to it than just a new design.

“We’re celebrating our 50th anniversary, and one way we’re honoring that is with our live exhibits,” Speicher said. “We went through photographs of plant bed layouts from the past 50 years and picked the best designs that we’ve ever had to recreate.”

Also as part of the yearlong anniversary celebration, artist Gary Bukovnik will unveil a commemorative painting of the tulips and daffodils in the garden that will hang permanently in the D.D. and Velma Davis Education and Visitor Center, she said.

A collection of Bukovnik’s work will be featured in the Weller Gallery in the visitor center after the international traveling exhibit leaves July 20.

“Being a free public place and exposing this caliber and type of artwork isn’t something that you see everyday,” Kaiser added.