Artists, Get Inspired by Plants
An invitation to look deeply and express what you see
Native Plant Trust's Visiting Artist Program invites local artists, creatives, movers ,and makers from all areas of the creative sphere to explore their art practice while working with and among the plants and landscapes of our native plant botanic garden, Garden in the Woods, in Framingham, MA, and our Native Plant Sanctuaries across New England. At the conclusion of their time with us, the visiting artist will present the culmination of their work to the public in the form of an exhibition, performance, conversation, installation, and/or other means.
Applications to the Visiting Artist Program will be accepted on a rolling basis. In general, we will host one artist presentation per season, but this may vary, depending on the work generated by the artist and the time of year.
To apply to the program, please complete and submit the form via the green button below. We will follow up with you upon receiving your application.
If you have any questions about the program, please email us at education@NativePlantTrust.org.
*Please note, this opportunity does not include housing or a housing subsidy. Visiting artists must provide their own transportation and housing.
Our 2024 Visiting Artist, Julie C. Baer
Her mixed-media nature art invites viewers to attend to and care for their natural surroundings and for themselves.
Julie C. Baer's practice involves repeated, close observation of the natural world, with particular attention to seasonal cycles. Series such as Arboretum (2023) and Tidepools (2023) surprise viewers by depicting trees and intertidal water bodies from unexpected angles, while Rewilding (2022) records the biodiversity that emerged in Baer’s own urban garden as she planted native plants, one species at a time.
At Native Plant Trust's Garden in the Woods, Baer will create a new body of work titled Regarding Nature. Inspired by the changing forms of plants, algae, fungi, lichens, and more across their life cycles, she will study features of Garden in the Woods that include the natural arrangement of plants, algae, and rocks around bodies of water and visual patterns of fungi and lichens that live on old trees. Her pieces will focus on these natural shapes, arrangements, and patterns and encourage viewers to see features of a familiar space in fresh and surprising ways.
Follow her on Instagram.
The image above is a horizontal slice of Baer's mixed-media work, Bellingham Biodiversity. Here's a sampling of other recent pieces.
Purple Joe-Pye Weed
Hazel Alder (Alnus serrulata)
Northern Bayberry (Morella pensylvanica)
Our Past Visiting Artists
Christine Southworth, 2023.
Christine Southworth, who inaugurated our Visiting Artist program, is a composer and video artist based in Lexington, MA, dedicated to creating art born from a cross-pollination of sonic and visual ideas. Inspired by intersections of technology and art, nature and machines, and musics from cultures around the world, her music employs sounds from man and nature, from Van de Graaff Generators to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seismic data from volcanoes. Christine worked at Native Plant Trust in spring 2023. A portion of her photo assemblage 156 Mushrooms appears above.
