WHAT TO READ RIGHT NOW

ADVERTISEMENT

Orchids and Art

A Ringling College of Art and Design alum has collaborated with the Selby Gardens horticultural and exhibition teams for this season’s annual Orchid Show, which opened over the weekend.

Christian Sampson, a native of Bradenton who graduated from RCAD in 1998 and has since exhibited at museums including the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, has brought to the gardens, its museum and its conservatory his works using glass, acrylic and dichroic (Greek for two-way) film to create installations that change with the light, the time of day, and the angle at which they are viewed. In the case of the Selby show, that means viewers will enjoy different experiences and interactions with the art each time they see it.

Sampson, whose work Vita in Motu is on permanent view at the Sarasota Art Museum, now lives and works in Los Angeles. But he uses what he learned during his time at Ringling College to approach color and form in a unique way, especially through his use of that specialized film, with which layers of metal oxides give the glass shifting colors. It’s like stained glass employing a modern, less expensive method of production.

Of course, the orchids and plants configured within Sampson’s creations play a role in projecting natural beauty, too. “Like a living thing,” Sampson says, the images before you “will always be changing.”

In some cases, the Florida shells Sampson recalls form his Florida upbringing are crushed and used as “pedestals” for his works. Inside the Richard and Ellen Sandor Museum of Botany & the Arts, there’s also a personal note in the video presented of the artist’s young daughter, moving and dancing to flower references, while wearing costumes designed by Sampson’s artist wife. Sampson also drew inspiration from the Ghost Orchid (Dendrophylax lindenii for all you budding botanists), located in Naples' Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary—an object of ongoing fascination that was originally photographed and illustrated by Selby’s longtime orchidologist, Carlyle Luer, some 50 years ago.

The Orchid Show continues through Dec. 6 at Selby’s downtown campus. For more information, visit selby.org. Read More