Co-Creating with Plants

drop-in workshop
as part of Earth Rising Eco Festival
at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
October 2022

This was a drop-in style workshop for all ages, that encouraged participants to craft a sculpture for and around a plant partner. I supplied an array of recycled and organic craft materials, some dyed with plants, to make with. I provided scissors, sewing needles, and paper tape as well as different plants from my home and garden. Some were houseplants in plastic pots, and others were dye plants in large rusted cans. The design of a work was to be informed by the plants themselves and by the qualities of the materials available. 

I asked people to set aside impulses to control the process or to pursue a certain planned look. Instead, I asked them to respond to the shape, posture, texture, colour, and any other characteristic of the plant, so that the plant itself might dictate aspects of the design. The resulting sculptures (which I called companion sculptures) were imaginative and whimsical. Though often hesitant at first, as the prompt was open-ended and many visitors were not artists, most were able to relax and work intuitively. Many enjoyed the process, with some staying for minutes and others for close to an hour.