Arts & Entertainment

Eagle Rockers Help Recapture California's Wildflower Heritage

Jane Tsong and John Wickham helped design and curate an exhibition about the journey of wildflowers into the home garden.

A major exhibition of California wildflowers designed and curated by two Eagle Rock residents has been extended from June 10 through July 8 at the Huntington Library in San Marino.

Titled “When They Were Wild: Recapturing California’s Wildflower Heritage,” the exhibition features more than 300 drawings, paintings and other objects that highlight how California’s plants found their way from the wilderness into people’s home gardens.

“Many of the works in the show are field drawings and notes by amateur naturalists,” Eagle Rock environmentalist Jane Tsong told Eagle Rock Patch about the exhibition she designed. “Some of these have scientific significance. Some are records that certain species once existed in locations where they no longer are seen.”

Tsong designed a mount system that allows visitors to appreciate drawings as they are—that is, as pages from notebooks. “I tried to recall the spontaneity and surprise of being in nature through the irregular spacing of arrangements, and through use of shadows,” she said, adding: “To see some of the works, you have to bend down low or look up high—just as if you have discovered unexpected wildflowers on a hike. The wall colors are inspired by nature—an overcast sky, a clear sky, and a sunny morning.”

There are no photographs of flowers in the show, which is being held at the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery. “This set the tone for visitors to immerse themselves in a time when artists recorded botanical details as faithfully as they could through pencil and paint in the field,” Tsong said.

Tsong’s favorite works in the show are the watercolors by Clara Mason Fox. “They are an incredible record of the diversity of plants that once grew in Silverado Canyon in Orange County,” she said. “How intimately she knew that one canyon. We blew up several of her watercolors to stretch to the ceiling, so that viewers walk among the flowers.”

John Wickham, former president of the Theodore Payne Foundation and an Eagle Rock resident, is one of the curators of the wildflower show.

Click here to read about the exhibition on the Huntington Library website.

Click here to see a photo feature of the show by the Los Angeles Daily News.

Click here to read an article about the show on KCET.org.


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