Bringing Emily into the Light: "This Earthen Door" at Brandywine Museum
- Victoria Rose
- May 22
- 4 min read
"What would a twenty-first century herbarium look like?" That question, posed by Leah Sobsey, is behind the new exhibition at The Brandywine Museum, This Earthen Door: Nature as Muse and Material. Artists Sobsey and Amanda Marchand, both photographers with wide-ranging experience and interests, found inspiration from an herbarium created by Emily Dickinson. This monumental work included over 400 pressed plants collected both from her own carefully curated garden and on walks near her Amherst, Massachusetts home.
Bloom—is Result—to meet a Flower
And casually glance
Would scarcely cause one to suspect
The minor Circumstance
Assisting in the Bright Affair So intricately done
Then offered as a Butterfly
To the Meridian— - Emily Dickinson, “Bloom—is Result—to meet a Flower”
Readers of Emily Dickinson are familiar with her many references to flowers and plants, both directly and as metaphors for life's various cycles. In recent decades Dickinson has received recognition as one of the country's foremost poets, while often being called reclusive and eccentric. But more is coming to be known about her whole life, including her love of baking for neighborhood children, participation in community events as a teenager and young adult, and wide network of connections via plentiful letters.
In her lifetime, Dickinson was known as an accomplished gardener and student of botany. It was a common way for women to interact with science at the time, using what was available to study the natural world. "We were drawn to the herbarium because it is so exquisite, with its careful meter on the page," said Marchand. "She was communicating in her own way."
The herbarium created by Dickinson now resides at Harvard University, and is too fragile to be displayed or handled. However, it has been entirely digitized and is available to view online. Each page is a work of art, the flowers delicately attached and labeled. It is a fantastic resource for botanists, giving insight into gardens of the time as well as how they have evolved. (It might also provide some solace to casual gardeners that mistakenly identify plants; Dickinson mislabeled poison ivy as creeping bittersweet, an uncomfortable mix-up that I have fallen victim to!)
When Marchand and Sobsey began conceptualizing this project, they wanted to use an eco-friendly approach. They started, of course, with the plants, choosing 66 to grow themselves, 33 in each of their gardens, and using the pigments from those to recreate the 66 pages of the herbarium. The pigment, extracted from plants in a mortar and pestle in an alcohol medium, was pressed with digital screenprints of the herbarium's pages to create anthotypes, an early form of photography. A video in the exhibition provides more information about this process for those interested in the technical details.
The result are stunning artworks that vary from pale pastels to vivid, almost neon prints, showcasing the interaction between natural dyes and sunlight. Without a camera, the process created shadow imprints of the herbarium. "They bring Dickinson to light as a person," said Marchand, as well as bringing the pages which otherwise would remain forever hidden to light for new audiences.
Beyond the herbarium's pages, the exhibition includes compositions which the artists call The Chromotaxia. "What are the other ways we can communicate the science?" said Sobsey. Their answer was to create colored sheets of pure pigment—their "photo papers." "It calls attention to the meaning and symbolism of the past," she noted, referencing how flowers have been used to communicate meanings as wide-ranging from romantic love to indifference to consolation inconsistency. The Chromotaxia is a new form of floriography, communicating information such as what type of pollinators plants require to what seasons they bloom in. "If you choose to read it, it tells you information, or you can just see it as a visual," said Marchand.
"Living in this time of climate chaos and plant loss, how can we tell these stories?" Marchand asked. This exhibition shows that it can communicate on multiple levels, bringing Dickinson's passions into new perspective while also exploring local ecosystems.
The final wall of the gallery includes a site-specific work, Estranged from Beauty—none can be—. This grouping includes ten anthotypes made from invasive species found on the lands of the Brandywine Conservancy. "From our conservancy point of view, the reforestation and native plant projects are very important," noted Amanda Burden, Senior Curator at the Brandywine Museum of Art. "[The artists] helped envision this as a work of art. For those of us who are visually minded, it works so much better."
"We are always thinking of 'what is a photograph?'" Sobsey said, when asked about the artists' collaboration. Their years of experimentation as well as collaboration with other researchers and plant scientists have allowed them to delve into both Dickinson's herbarium and the natural world, creating an exploration of natural pigments and light intertwined with art, sustainability, and poetry. Each artwork tells a different story. It is up to the viewer to take it back with them into the light outside.
This Earthen Door: Nature as Muse and Material On View May 24—September 7 The Brandywine Museum of Art, 1 Hoffman's Mill Road, Chadds Ford, PA
More information, including related events, at Brandywine.org
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