Studio Blog

Conservatory Explored

Outside the Studio

Artists from Creativity Explored’s lower Potrero Hill studio recently immersed themselves in the humid and leafy environment known as The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. In anticipation of the current Creativity Explored show, INsects INsectos, our chief goal was to check out The Butterfly Zone: Plants and Pollinators for inspiration and a little drawing time. While exploring the aquatic plants section, we stumbled upon a cool surprise: a collection of miniature plant and rock landscapes known as ‘penjing’. These tiny living dioramas of Chinese origin (dating back to the 7th century!) utilize scaled-down plants similar to the “Bonsai” of Japanese culture.

After snaking our way through the highland tropics and lowland tropics, we arrived at the Butterfly Zone (open through November 2, 2008). Stepping through the plastic slat curtain, we immediately encountered a six-foot long replica of a beetle (or was it a cockroach?). And around the corner from that hovered a gigantic model of a honeybee. As promised by the title of the exhibit, butterflies were in abundance (all 25 species of ‘em) but they were either flitting about too rapidly or setting down somewhere too awkward for the artists to sketch them. Solution? Several of the artists opted for depicting the large-scale reproduction of the honeybee. It had the advantage of being just opposite a bench and it didn’t move.

# Posted by Francis on July 7, 2008