13 minute read
Seeds of Wonder
By Kevin Spracher, Interpretation and Exhibitions Curator
What has happened to the art of wondering in the age of instant answers? Maybe it’s too soon to say. I’ve been down too many curiosity-fueled Wikipedia rabbit holes to say that the instant answers are all bad — sometimes answers lead to the next question. But surely there has been a downtick in the prolonged type of wondering where you sit with, wrestle with, and engage with not knowing.
These days, when a question forms in my mind, like, “How do seeds work?,” I just Google it, like the other 5.35 billion humans who have internet access. (Actually, only 92% of those 5-ish billion are Google users. How do I know that? I Googled it!) And then I can choose from an endless variety of explainers that describe embryos, pollen, and zygotes. But when I’m under the towering coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) in Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and I shake one of their tiny seeds out of one of their tiny cones and really wonder, “How does this little brown dot become that?,” a whole host of other questions and possibilities opens in my mind.
Planting Seeds of Wonder in the Pritzlaff Conservation Center Gallery
Wonder is what drives us to construct deeper understanding, which is so much more than knowing the right answer. Often, getting an answer is what lets the mind move on, no longer grappling with the mystery. When we really wonder about something, it can stick like a seed in our brain. With enough sustained attention, those seeds grow into new ideas and beliefs. In the Garden, perhaps that’s a belief that native plants need to be conserved and protected. Since part of the Garden’s mission (and my job) is to foster love for native plants, I am always looking for ways to pique our guests’ curiosity and build that pathway to love.
In my role as a curator, this happens most naturally in the Pritzlaff Conservation Center (PCC) Gallery. With each exhibition in the PCC Gallery, we aim to blend art and science in ways that elevate native plants and habitats in new and unexpected ways. Situated in a building of cutting-edge scientific research (a microscope-filled lab down the hall, a climate-controlled seed lab, and an herbarium a floor below) with one whole wall opening onto stunning views of the Channel Islands, the PCC Gallery literally blends science with the splendor of native scenery. It’s the perfect setting to generate wonder.
Finding the Art in Science
Usually, when it comes to new exhibits, I focus on finding artists from outside the Garden whose work with native plants can inspire our visitors. The Garden’s archivist, Hannah Barton, and I are always looking for work that will help shape how our guests see the landscape around them. However, two years ago, we decided to use one show a year to shift our attention inward toward the Garden’s conservation work. Behind the scenes at the Garden (and in the pages of this magazine), we see so much aesthetically interesting work from our staff, such as herbarium specimens (dried and pressed plants which are artfully arranged and adhered to paper), field photography from seed collection trips in rarely seen corners of California, and ultra-close-up microscopic images of iridescent-armored pollinators. All these things were created with as much care and eye for detail as an artist would use. We started to wonder, what would happen if we took this work out of its normal context and presented it as pieces of art?
The annual Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Conservation Symposium offered us an opportunity to share and celebrate what goes on inside (and often outside) the PCC. In 2023, our 10th annual Conservation Symposium focused on the recovery of the islands of the Californias. Part of our accompanying exhibit, “At the Edge,” displayed the research that uncovered the diverse diet of the Channel Island fox by analyzing the different types of DNA found in their scat. To visually convey the findings, we created a floor-to-ceiling collage of about 30 photographs of native plants and seeds, lizards, crabs, and various bugs.
Then in 2024, the Conservation Symposium theme of “Tiny Taxa Doing Big Things” saw us using the ghostly grayscale images of a scanning electron microscope produced in the Garden’s Plant Anatomy Lab. At first glance, they look like pictures of a fire scape, maybe from recent wildfire. But the scale is macro — these are the trichomes, almost-too-small-to-comprehend branching hairs, on paintbrush wildflowers (Castilleja sp.).
In both exhibits, our aim was to prompt questions from the viewer. What is that? What do those have in common? Why would someone need to see a flower so close-up? These are contextual questions you can’t simply Google; we intended to spark wonder that would draw in the viewer to investigate further.
These past two years have been an experiment in learning how to adapt science into art. As we turned our curating focus to the 2025 Conservation Symposium theme of “Seeds,” we were already thinking of new ways to boost wonder and inspire you to take that wonder with you.
Behind the Scenes of Our Next Exhibit
These Conservation Symposium shows require a lot of collaboration with the Garden’s Conservation Department staff. Having an excuse to sit with our in-house botanists, entomologists, and (only) lichenologist to absorb their stories is one of the best parts of my job. Every year, Hannah and I start with a broad brainstorming conversation with the ever-insightful Director of Conservation and Research Denise Knapp, Ph.D. My notes from this year’s meeting show that Denise had no shortage of inspiring content for us to pull from: seed bulking projects, seed collection projects, seed cleaning and cataloging projects, and seed dispersal and pollinator network research. Surprise, surprise! The Garden has lots of projects related to seeds.
The Convergence of Science and Art
With so many possibilities, the best place to start seemed to be the Garden’s Conservation Seed Bank. With over 3.7 million seeds, we knew the Seed Bank would have something wonderful to share. To learn more, I reached out to Senior Rare Plant Conservation Scientist Heather Schneider, Ph.D., who manages the Conservation Seed Bank.
Is it weird to be a fan of your coworker? I feel like I see Heather more often on the news than around the Garden. She’s who the New York Times calls for a quote on the super bloom or she’s on National Public Radio talking about the delisting of endangered species on the Channel Islands. So, for an amateur native plant admirer and gardener like me, it feels like a privilege to have access to her help and ideas. When I met with Heather and breathlessly (and perhaps manically) told her some of my ideas for the show — maybe we could 3D print seeds or make timelapses of seeds growing — she smiled and nodded and started to help me piece loose threads into a cohesive idea.
First, Heather gave me access to the rare plant team’s library of microscopic seed images. These high-quality photos taken through a microscope are absolute wonder-generating jewels. There is something magical about seeing a seed at this scale — like removing an invisibility cloak, their true forms become clear. Heather told me that when she takes guests on tours of the PCC labs and shows them seeds in a microscope, the experience consistently elicits the same amazement.
“People almost always gasp,” Heather noted, “because it’s so surprising. They look like little brown lumps but then you get them under the scope, suddenly they have all this texture and structure.” It was obvious to me these images would attract attention on the PCC Gallery walls, but it’s what Heather told me the gasping guests do next that got me excited: “They start asking questions.” They want to know: What are those hooks for? Why does it have scales? Why does it look like a honeycomb? How does that seed know how to camouflage itself? These are the kinds of hard-toanswer-but-easy-to-wonder-about questions that are perfect for prolonged curiosity.
From Seed to Sculptures
Once Hannah and I decided to focus on the beauty in the microscopic details, we wondered how to inspire viewers to ask questions and to more deeply wonder about the ingenuity and diversity of California’s native seeds. I started to think about how these images might inspire other artists. And I really wanted to get them off the page and into three-dimensional space. My mind immediately went to Rosie Brand, an artist and sculptor whom I started following on Instagram because she was teaching clay seed pod workshops across Southern California.
When I initially suggested to Rosie that she could use these images as inspiration for sculptures, it was immediately clear that she was exactly the right person to take the idea further. She explained to me how she not only looks to seeds for inspiration but also as teachers. “Personally, I like to think about plant intelligence — that these other-than-human beings have an agency of their own,” Rosie explained. I wondered if creating more abstract representations of the seeds in sculpture form could help express some of that plant intelligence and agency? Rosie was already there and added on: “This sense of ‘wonder’ perhaps belongs to the seeds themselves. We can begin to think of these intricate structures almost like the thought-forms, the ideas and dreams of plants. Speculative spaces which humans can actually inhabit by extending our imaginations, through close observation and heightened sensitivity.” Rosie agreed to interpret the photos we selected for the walls into sculptures to help create a “speculative space” for viewers. I can already feel science and art merging right in front of me and I can’t wait for you to witness how her passion for connecting with plants comes across in the work she creates.
Capturing the Diversity of Seeds in Student Art
Hannah and I were excited about how the new exhibit was taking shape. But there was something else Heather shared that I didn’t want to miss. She said, “The diversity in the flora is mirrored in the diversity of seeds.” I worried if we showed only a few standout seeds, viewers might overlook the many multitudes of seeds there are in California’s richly biodiverse web of life. I realized we should display lots and lots of images.
La Colina Junior High School has been on a mission to add more native plants to their landscape, so connecting to them felt like the obvious choice. I also happened to have a connection with the art teacher, Hallie Silva. (Full disclosure, she’s my wife.) When I first pitched the idea to Hallie, she was skeptical. Are seeds really interesting enough to draw? But then, just like Heather described, when I showed her the images, it clicked. The subtle variations in color, undertones, textures, and patterns are perfect for an art class to explore. Hallie immediately saw the potential for her students to use the seeds as inspiration, not just for technical skill development but to deepen their understanding of native plants and their role in the ecosystem.
Soon, we had a microscope set up in her classroom, allowing students to study seeds up close. As the students set out on their initial sketches, I witnessed the “sustained, compassionate attention” that John Muir Laws talks about as the gateway to falling in love with something. They began experimenting with different techniques to capture the textures they observed — cross-hatching, stippling, blending — while asking questions and researching the origins, structures, and dispersal methods of their chosen seeds. With over 50 students participating, they’ll generate enough art to fill an entire wall with intricately drawn seeds.
I am not expecting all the students to become obsessed with native plants (okay, maybe a few of them), but the project is giving them something to focus on and wonder about, and that might be a seed that takes root. I’m eager to see what they create!
An Invitation to Wonder
I don’t know what is going to happen to wonder as the world becomes more and more explained, but working at the Garden makes me feel optimistic. A visit here can be framed as an opportunity to wonder. It’s a place where you can sit in the space of not knowing and follow the cues within you to a deeper understanding.
And just in time to practice your wondering, mark your calendar for our 12th annual Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Conservation Symposium. The Conservation Symposium takes place on February 8, 2025. And, not to be missed — especially since you have the insider scoop — is the Symposium’s accompanying PCC Gallery show, "Seed: A Living Dream," opening in early December 2024. The exhibit is free with admission to the Garden, so come discover the sculpture and art inspired by California’s beautifully complex native seeds. We’ll see you there.
