Washashores, Natives and Invasives

 

       Some of my best friends are plants, and now I learn that genetically speaking we are more than 60% identical to bananas and fruit flies. LUCA, our Last Universal Common Ancestor lived about 3 or 4 billion years ago. Our great, great…. Grandmother. NO wonder plant fibers resemble muscle, skin, bones and branches. Tree limbs and human limbs need to be refreshed daily with food and water. Luckily for us the trees also provide us with oxygen. What do we give them?

​

       Fibers connect us (by “us” I’m including all living things) across time and space, throughout one lifetime or several generations.  What gets passed on genetically? Whether a bean or a human? How does it compare to what lived before? Can genetic traits be coaxed into transforming in the next generation, by JOY?, trauma?, music, art, love?

​

       Some of these plants are Native, some washashore and some invasive; to North America, to Cape Cod. Plants with cellulose fiber and humans have been collaborating for centuries to make cordage, textiles and paper. For my work, they are cooked, usually beaten and then formed in a variety of ways. Each plant has their own personality: color, texture, strength and spirit. Most were found around the Outer Cape, some were imported. 

​

I hope you enjoy looking, and contemplating whatever resonates. 

The artworks are 100% plant material, and we humans are about 60% plant material.

Thanks, 

Sheryl 

 

The plants included here in this exhibit, in no particular order:

Privet

English Ivy 

Codium Tomentosum

Flax

Yellow Flag iris

Cedar 

Wisteria vine, inner bark and outer bark

Seaweed, Rockweed

Cotton rag

Mulberry/Kozo

Yucca

Walnut

Miscanthus 

Poppy

Lichen