I am so in love with Taylor McKimen’s plant pieces. To me, the amount of genius here is just staggering. At Plant Propaganda, we have seen plants tortured, smashed into a million pieces and turned into high art. All of which are, of course, fabulous things to do with plants. But what hits so close to home about McKimen’s work is the honesty. Having hung around plenty of skilled gardeners, I know there are those who share my passion for a well-tended plant. But, having also managed a hydroponics shop in a college town, I am also familiar with the sort of carnage wreaked on plants that exist in the public space and not in the confines of a private yard – chewing gum stuck to cactus spines, broken beer bottles and wadded up tissues stuffed in pots, used Band-aids hidden among the foliage.

These are the plants in McKimens’ world. Growing up in a small California town on the border of Mexico, his work his influenced by his experience of the Southwest. These are the sorts of plants you find in run-down, often impoverished parts of cities throughout America: plants forgotten, sitting sadly on the porch amongst discarded liquor bottles, hung with old socks, covered in cobwebs and planted in all manner of dollar-store pot or soup can. Christmas cacti and geraniums purchased at Home Depot that have been neglected for years, now sharing space with beer cans and candy wrappers.

There are more than just a few of these patio vignettes up and down our street, making me feel a down-to-earth-ness and connection with McKimen’s pieces. And when his plants are elsewhere, they don’t fare much better: indoors, they are forgotten relics sitting atop ancient CRT televisions. In their natural habitat, they struggle up through and grow over the wreckage of a defunct pickup truck. Despite it all, though, the pieces are not depressing. They are just real. Illustrated in the bright colors and cartoony curves of the graffiti McKimens’ grew up around, and with blunt, tongue-in-cheek titles like  Cactus Tangle, Tackle Cactus and Ashtray Succulent, there is still delight to be found here.

Read more…

Not all of Baltimore artist Beth Hoeckel’s collages feature plants. In fact, most of the best ones don’t. But some do, and that’s enough for me! Throughout all of Hoeckel’s work, there runs a deep sense of being amazed at the grandness of the universe, as evidenced in her Point of View series, which depicts people from all walks of life staring in awe at various natural vistas, be it the moon, a mountain, the sky or the ocean, sometimes larger than the landscape and often times dwarfed by it.

To me, the images below represent our strange, frequently confused struggle to interact with and find our place in the natural world. We are fascinated by nature, but also scared of it. Hence the image of a woman awkwardly kissing a cactus, and three others showing women surrounded by larger-than-life plants, staring existentially off into the distance. How many of us have felt this way, overwhelmed by a simple task such as caring for a houseplant or reseeding a lawn? Daily we are asked to interact with a world that we grow increasingly distant from. Plant Propaganda is about helping to close that gap.

Or maybe I’m just reading too much into all this. But it’s my blog, and I’m allowed to.

Read more…

You might not recognize the name, but you’ve probably seen her work on more than a few covers at your local bookstore. What you haven’t seen, however, is the personal work of photographer Laura Hanifin. The pictures below are from a series entitled Night Garden. And while I’m not in love with the entire set, I think these six work well together. I think unintended results are often the best ones, and these photos have a few. Like the fact that Hanifin chose to snap pictures of sunflowers and daylilies during the night.

We tend to think of plants as beings of the light, as sun is so crucial to their growth and development. It’s true that many plants fold their leaves and close their flowers, resting much like we do. But still others have a secret second life when the sun goes down. Take, for example, the night-blooming cereus, a group of cacti whose blooms open only at night in order to be pollinated by nocturnal creatures like bats and moths, or brugmansia, which is most fragrant when it gets dark. When I interned at the San Diego Botanic Garden and had the pleasure to live on-site, I made use of the after-hours access to stroll through the garden and experience things like this, and I suggest you consider doing the same.

Read more…

I have never been a fan of begonias, but these over-the-top tuberous varieties stopped me in my tracks during a recent visit to Balboa Park’s conservatory (which, did you know, is the only glassless conservatory in the world, being built entirely from wood lath). I am in love with these shade-loving giants, and their stunning colors make me reconsider a move back to Portland, where I can see them brightening summer beds.

Long before floral print came into fashion – before it went out of fashion, and became fashionable again – outside of the cyclical trends of this world, exist the timeless and deep-rooted cultural costume of indigenous people around the world. Before wearing 100% cotton and sustainable hemp shirts was a “thing,” these people were practicing the ultimate in environmentally conscious clothing. Photographer Hans Silvester has spent a great deal of time documenting such wildly imaginative adornments and body painting among the nomadic tribes of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, whose traditions have been maintained for thousands of years. How’s that for a heritage brand?

Read more…