Between Jan. 7 and April 30, visitors filtered through the doors of Matthaei Botanical Gardens to view the Connatural Exhibit by Art & Design lecturer Cathy Barry. Barry drew inspiration from patterns she observed in nature in an effort to call attention to the importance of environmental conservation.
Barry used natural pigments derived from local sources found in a variety of plant sources in her work for the exhibit, including purple and yellow onion skins, turmeric, beets, cattails and forsythias. For the past few years, Barry has been working towards “greener” practices of creating artwork in order to lessen her environmental impact. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Barry explained her progression toward using more environmentally-friendly materials
“I had been using oil paints and other very toxic pigments before, and I was really getting tired of doing that,” Barry said. “After my last exhibition of oil paintings, I just packed all those up and put them away and started investigating nontoxic pigments, which is how I found the earth pigments that I used in many of the paintings, and those were purchased pigments from all over the world … France, Italy, Germany. (The) carbon footprint of that was a problem for me, so I decided that I would start making my own with local materials.”
At the front of the exhibit, a written artist statement tells visitors that Barry’s main inspiration for her art was a desire to create pieces that speak to natural beauty in light of the current climate crisis. The description said drawing inspiration from nature has allowed her to create artwork that not only represents the natural world but celebrates it through preservation.
“Nature is the big umbrella of what inspires and has always informed my work,” the statement read. “The climate crisis has created an urgency that has called many artists to make works that speak to the beauty, preciousness and precariousness of our environment. My recent work goes a step further by challenging the nature of making art itself.”
Rising Art & Design senior Natasha Leavitt said Barry’s work has influenced the way Leavitt approaches her own work.
“There’s really such a beauty in that ephemerality of her work and that it’s so real, that it changes and that’s really played into my work a lot too,” Leavitt said. “I’ve been trying to make more organic pigments and being really eco-minded with making work and trying not to use toxic materials.”
Barry said her exhibit has sparked conversations with members of the art community about utilizing more eco-friendly practices and experimenting with natural pigments.
“I’m not the only person feeling or thinking this way … from the Botanical Gardens, there (have) been several people who have called and asked questions about life with those natural earth pigment paints,” Barry said. “I’ve had people email me and ask me, ‘How do you make your paints?’ I’ve had conversations with colleagues from (the School of Art & Design) itself, becoming more careful and responsible about the materials that we asked students to buy and that we are having students use.”
When naming the pieces of the exhibit, Barry turned to Taylor Swift for inspiration. As a big fan of Swift’s music, Barry said she wanted to emulate how Swift hides clues in her work.
“I was super inspired during the pandemic (by) how productive and prolific Taylor Swift was,” Barry said. “I always think about what inspired me for this, what was I looking at, what was I thinking about? And then I often will use a thesaurus to find the right word. And then I started thinking about the Taylor Swift influence, so I thought that was just kind of funny because she always hides clues in her work.”
Barry said that her pieces “Labyrinth” and “Bejeweled” were both named after the respective songs in Swift’s album Midnights released in October 2022.
“The word labyrinth sort of implies a maze,” Barry said. “The way that I compose is, really moving pieces around 100,000 times until I feel like ‘Oh, yeah, that’s it.’ And then things kind of clear together, and it’s a lot of different decisions. So that kind of connected to ‘Labyrinth.’‘Bejeweled’ – I had kind of thought of it as a jewel piece before that even came out. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but it was just kind of sparkly.
U-M alum Claire Furio first attended the exhibit at its opening in January with friends and said she felt the setting of the botanical garden enhanced her experience of the exhibit.
“I don’t know what a better location would be because it’s all surrounded by plants and the environment,” Furio said. “It seems like a fitting place for Cathy’s work to be presented in because so much of her work surrounds the environment and is derived from plants and her inspiration comes from the natural world … so it just seemed like a perfect fit.”
Summer News Editor Sneha Dhandapani can be reached at sdhanda@umich.edu.