Human Flower Project

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Flower Scans—Creepy and/or Art

A Toledo art competition awards first prize to scanned flowers.

“Homage to de Heem”

by Glenn Osborn, Perrysburg, OH

Image: via Toledo Blade

Last month an electronic ripple ran through the gardening blogsphere, as Kathy Purdy tried her hand, eyes, office machinery, and snowdrops in a premiere floral scan. Purdy had been inspired by Katinka Matson, and her inspiration was contagious. Cultivated and May Dreams Garden and Mucknmire posted their experiments, too. “The scans look like old Dutch paintings to me,” wrote Ki. “I guess the limited amount of scanning light gives it the North window diffuse lighting artists like so much.”

Glenn Osborn of Perrysburg, Ohio, thought so too. His Homage to de Heem is a floral photo scan (CORRECTION: it’s a “digital photo collage”—see discussion and source in comments) after the renowned 17th Century Flemish/Netherlandish artist Jan Davidsz de Heem, whom some consider the greatest still life painter of all time.

As in de Heem’s works, Osborn brings flowers together with berries and insects. A fine striped caterpillar toiling its way up a stem makes the Osborne piece especially lively.

Craig of Ellis Hollow and Annie, the Transplantable Rose, also posted their scanned flowers, both with some misgivings. “I don’t think I like the effect,” wrote Annie— “actually- it’s kind of creeping me out.” We found especially intriguing Pam Penick’s online musings April 21 after scanning a pretty, natural knickknack: a bird’s nest and eggs glued together. “Even calling this image a photograph seems unnatural to me,” wrote Pam, whose Digging was recently chosen the best garden photography blog. “Is this a photograph?” she asks. “Is there any art in it? Of course, people asked those very same questions about photography when photographs were first produced.”

With Pam’s reflections in mind, we were intrigued to find that Glenn Osborn’s “Homage to de Heem” won Best in Show at the 89th Toledo Area Artists’ exhibition. His scan of flowers and bugs was chosen from 655 entries in many media; 107 of those works, including “Homage to de Heem,” will be on view in the Works on Paper Galleries, Toledo Museum of Art, through July 8.

Sea grape flowers, by Nicole

via A Caribbean Garden

What is it about floral scans that make them suspect? Too easy or fast? Too mechanized a process? Pre-photography, in the French Academy’s Hierarchy of Genres, still life was a low life, too, ranking above only landscape painting on the scale of snoot. But, as Pam makes note, we busted that old ladder of worthiness at least 150 years ago. Now we recognize this and this as art. Major museums have canonized also this, at which the hinge on our open-mind begins creaking backward….

We wonder if scanned flowers strike many folks as non-art or nearly art because no matter the scanners, human and electronic, the images usually wind up looking very much the same. The effect is like a card trick:  wondrous the first time you see it done, but then you learn it, and the magic leaks away.

A hankering after character draws us to the scans made nonchalantly, it seems, by Nicole, at A Caribbean Garden. On some, you can see flecks of dust shining from her scanner’s glass, but it doesn’t matter. Her vitex blooms and tiny sea grape flowers strike us as originals—so why not?—as ART.