Nature into Art: Rebecca Louise Law and the Ephemeral

Enter the ever-changing world of Rebecca Louise Law in a landmark exhibition that uses flowers as sculpture to explore, in the artist’s words, “the balance between survival and art.”

Greek physician Hippocrates once said, “Ars longa, vita brevis,” or “Art is long, life is short.” The ephemeral nature of The Womb by renowned British sculptor Rebecca Louis Law challenges this idea. The immersive and site-specific installation took hundreds of hands and more than one million pieces of flora to create, and it can only be experienced here at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park through March 1, 2020. The notion that art made from naturally decaying material cannot last ominously surrounds the work that Law began in 2004, which led to a series of distinctive installations at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Toledo Museum of Art and, now, Meijer Gardens.

The apparent contradiction of making sculpture from perpetually changing material never stopped the artist from engaging with her preferred materials. Her journey of creating an afterlife for botanicals echoes ancient traditions of using flowers in a commemorative way, such as archaeological treasures like the floral wreaths originally placed with Egyptian and GrecoRoman mummies. Yet generally, the history of Western art has focused on the “Ars longa” of Hippocrates’ aphorism, with sculptors prioritizing durable material like stone and metal to create long-lasting monuments in marble and bronze. Only in the past five decades have artists begun to push sculpture into a new direction, incorporating plants, flowers, food and other fleeting material into their work. The late 1960s was a watershed moment in art history, as artists increasingly explored the possibilities of integrating organic material to expand the definition of sculpture. In his book, Sculpture Since 1945, art historian Andrew Causey notes that, “Sculptures could be made from earth and sand; growing plants; live birds and animals; fabric; classical fragments; architectural structures; neon tubes; light beams; etc.”

The desire to break away from the restrictive, traditional gallery setting led artists to embrace different forms of land art. In 1974, Richard Morris designed his first large-scale earthwork in the United States, with Belknap Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Morris carved a field out of an existing hillside with two intersecting pathways that form an X shape. Often referred to as “Project X,” his landscape design remains, but has evolved over time as weeds have grown around it and cracks have appeared in its asphalt paths.

Several artists in the permanent collection at Meijer Gardens are closely linked with nature-based, organically-developed art too. Giuseppe Penone’s sculptures and performances have often centered on his tactile connection with trees and their cycles of growth. His bronze It Will Continue to Grow Except at that Point, on view in The Richard & Helen DeVos Japanese Garden, explores the line between the natural environment and the manmade. Andy Goldsworthy is perhaps the most well-known artist currently working with impermanent material like ice, sticks, leaves and flowers. You can see his monumental Grand Rapids Arch, made from Scottish sandstone, in our Sculpture Park. David Nash peers into the organic process of wood decay and natural growth in Sabre Larch Hill, for which the artist partnered with our own sculpture and horticulture teams to plant a grouping of larch trees tied to stakes for their initial growing years. Eventually, these trees will mature untethered, modifying their originally prescribed direction, to grow into the shape of sabres.

Giusepee Penone. It Will Continue to Grow Except at that Point, 2004-2010.

Photo by Peter McDaniel.

Rebecca Louise Law is the latest artist featured at Meijer Gardens to ponder the sculptural potential of natural material. Drawing her inspiration from the cocoon in both human and botanical realms, she probes the boundaries of humanity’s relationship to nature and the analogies between forms of shelter and life-sustaining environments. The Womb is an immersive experience inviting us into a sculptural passage that is both beautiful and boundless. Essay by Jochen Wierich, Curator of Sculpture & Sculpture Exhibitions Enter the ever-changing world of Rebecca Louise Law in a landmark exhibition that uses flowers as sculpture to explore, in the artist’s words, “the balance between survival and art.”

Essay by Jochen Wierich, Curator of Sculpture & Sculpture Exhibitions