Susie Mathre

Despite having many useful qualities as a culinary root and medicinal herb, the burdock plant in Montana is considered a noxious weed in some counties, and just plain obnoxious when the burs attach themselves to one’s clothing or pet. The ability to adhere to itself is evident in the stacking of these burs, there isn’t anything else holding them up. After deriving a favorable webbing configuration for the burs to stick to, a small glass vial of the seeds was added at the top of the piece.

Private collection

Pennycress is considered a weed in Montana, growing in disturbed soils throughout the state. It has both medicinal and toxic qualities, but what interested me is the beautiful shape of the seed pods and their stem’s radial progression of growth every 137.5˚(roughly). This allows sunlight and rain to reach leaves along the entire stem of the plant with minimal blockage. Known as the phyllotactic ratio, (1/phi) or the golden angle, it follows rules related to Fibonacci sequences.

Beginning at the lowest point on the center pillar, as each steel holder of the pennycress wax disc ascends, the Fibonacci number sequence is stamped into each folded semicircle along with scribed lines and a brass clasp that grow increasingly more complex as they rise up the center stem. At the top, the Fibonacci numbers continue in their sequence as they return down the copper spiral.

A friend gave me a small pile of horse chestnuts she had gathered, thinking I would enjoy using them in my art pieces, and she was right. There’s something intriguing about the conkers; the outer spikes contrasting with the inner smooth nut. What better way to exhibit one than to suspend it?

As a bicyclist and letterpress printer, I’ve always enjoyed the shape of gears and saw the opportunity to incorporate that shape into this piece. Knowing that I would need to keep track of filament attachments from the top to the bottom, I decided to use the alphabet, capitals on top and lowercase on the bottom. Adding braille was a response to wanting to investigate another form of communication after I’ve had permanent hearing loss in one ear. The quote stamped along the band surrounding the dome sums it up nicely, from artist Paul Klee, “One eye sees, the other feels.”

Private collection

This piece began with two wasps nests I discovered atop my garage doorframe as I was emptying the structure for demolition to make way for my studio. I was endeared to their size and shape, reminding me of tiny planets, and because there were only two, of the idea of duality emerged. This led to rambling thoughts about yin/yang, black/white, the I Ching, hexagrams, astrology, and the cosmos. I began to research celestial theories and was intrigued by a more obscure proposal of the planetary universe by an Italian astronomer and Catholic priest, Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598-1671). His system is a modified version of Tycho Brahe’s Tychonic system, where the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn all orbit the Earth. The outer ring represents the stars that ensphere the whole universe.

This piece took several twists and turns of failure along the way; one of the original nests went up in flames while I was using a torch to smooth the encaustic paint. My options at that point were to find another nest or leave it with the ashes and title it something like Homage to Icarus. Fortunately, the internet is a vast marketplace for all sorts of eclectic oddities, and a replacement made for a revamped, but happy ending.

The iris is the embodiment of three. Three petals, three sepals, three styles. The history and use of this flower goes back to ancient times crossing many borders and was symbolic in Greek mythology as the Goddess Iris, as a Fleur-de-lis for French royalty, and in Christianity in the form of the trinity.

The shape of the seedpod, or capsules, and their tripartite structure made me think of the many cathedrals I studied in art history classes; specifically Gothic architecture, in Gothic cathedrals. To that end, I decided to create stylized petals and sepals to surround the seedpods inspired by Gothic cathedral window design, loosely resembling bar tracery. Each trio progresses in complexity and height, as a nod to the advancements in Gothic architecture over time. The center shape is based on a trefoil knot, or a triquetra, and is filled with the colors of the Western blue iris when in bloom, one of my favorite wild flowers in this area, and a welcome sign of spring.

To connect the dome to the base, I continued with the Gothic architecture theme and fabricated the three “flying buttresses” to congregate at the top in an arch to complete the piece.

Private collection

As a child my friends and I would collect the seed pods of White Campion growing in the alley and use the dried vase-shaped pods as salt and pepper shakers for our tiny tea parties, probably reseeding the surrounding area in the process.

I’ve always been attracted to the shape of the seed pods of this weed and when I learned they were a dioecious plant (meaning there are separate male and female plants) I was inspired to commingle their yin and yang elements of the botany world.

Also known as Bull Rattle or Cow Rattle (depending on which gender I suppose), the plant is also a study of five and multiples of five. Both male and female have five petals, but the female has 20 veins on its calyx (the balloon shaped pod), while the male only has ten. The female has five white styles that curl out beyond the lower collar, while the male has ten yellow stamens that don’t extend very far. The fruit capsules of both have ten teeth.

While dioecious plants make up about five percent of the flowering plant species, the sex ratio of white campion favors the fairer sex with 50-75% of the population, with the males trailing at 25-50%.

In this piece the pentagon makes an appearance in various places, starting outside of the dome on the top with a swirled pentagonal motif on the steel piece. Moving inside the dome, it is inscribed around the brass female (pistillate) form and cutout in the steel male (staminate) form as the pieces rotate. Finally, the base of each forms a pentagon.

One day I was thinking about teasel, and a friend called me to tell me she had found some teasel while on a trip in Oregon, and asked, would I like her to bring some back for me?  I like it when synchronicity shows up in my life.

For whatever reason, an image of a 50s era futuristic city in space popped into my head and I ran with it.  But first I wanted to do more research on this spiky plant that shows up in quite a few floral arrangements for both weddings and cemeteries.

Native to Europe, teasel was widely cultivated for its dried seedheads.  They were used in raising the nap on woolen cloth (teasing).  First used in a handheld carding device, later the heads were collected and lined up in a large apparatus able to do it much faster, called a gig mill.  This was such a great invention that teasel was brought to the US to be grown and put in gig mills in the early 18th century where it was profitable, until it wasn’t.  Teasel now grows where it’s not wanted and is considered an invasive weed.

Today’s gig mills have something similar to teasel seedheads but are made out of steel and produce a subpar product.  Teasel is still used for high standard cloth such as billiard table felt and the Pope’s vestments.

There is some debate about whether teasel is carnivorous or not.  The cup-like leaf base fills with rainwater which then catches undesirables like aphids and appears to digest them, ultimately increasing its seed production.  They also have an unusual flowering pattern, starting as a ring of flowers in the middle of the seedhead; then the flower ring divides into two rings, one moving north, the other south. 

In this piece the teasel stalks stand between two steel rings.  The upper is an Apollonian gasket with a network of tangent circles within the outer ring, and the lower ring has circles that are perpendicular to those in the upper gasket.  Because teasel also has roots in Chinese medicine, I decided to include some aspects of the I Ching in this piece using the curvature values of the inner circles and their corresponding hexagrams, also cutting the relevant hexagram patterns into the leaves. 

To ensphere this piece, so to speak, and circling around the idea of the inner meeting the outer world, I used Morse code to represent a section of chapter 63 from the Tao Te Ching.

The castor bean plant is truly in a category of its own, being the only member of the genus Ricinus communis. It’s also a fantastical looking species with its scarlet red spiny seed heads and purple leaves that reminds me of the botany of Dr. Seuss. It never fails to attract visitors to my garden who immediately want to touch it, which can cause a skin rash to the unlucky few. But that’s a small inconvenience compared to what happens if you chew the seeds.  

The castor bean is the source of castor oil - a useful lubricant for engines, a helpful laxative, and a wonderful moisturizer. It’s also the source of ricin, lethal when four or so seeds are ingested, or when received in the mail from a disgruntled trucker. 

Drawn to the dichotomy of this plant, all its weird parts and its biblical connections (it’s also called the Palm of Christ), I drifted to thoughts of a religious nature, mostly surrounding the architecture of cathedrals and their relics within.  

Wanting to incorporate aspects of phyllotaxis from the math world, I utilised a section of what’s called a Van Iterson diagram intersecting with Farey triangles, then turned that on its side and extended some legs. This is the three-pronged structure with inset castor leaves supporting the three- pronged cluster of seed pods: a pinnacle of sorts.  

The ‘relics’ are resin encased components of a seed pod and some immature flowers, and the congregation of castor beans sit in a dual spiral pattern of phyllotaxis, perhaps pondering their existence in this artwork rather than in a garden. The diagram on the floor is another Van Iterson diagram, but shown in a circular format. Outside the dome, Farey graphs encircle the glass of this fanciful sculpture. 

Mayans, had two cyclical calendars that ran concurrently; the sacred calendar (tōnalpōhualli) consisted of 13 months of 20 days for a totAt the end of our brief growing season, there always remain a copious number of empty tomatillos, unable to fulfill their fruiting destiny, leaving the husks to dry in the autumn sun, including one for this sculpture.

Further south (and enjoying a much longer growing season), the Aztecs most likely domesticated this tangy green tomato-like fruit some 2100 years ago.  This Mesoamerican civilization, known for their agricultural prowess and frequent use of human sacrifice, also used a series of calendars that were remarkable.  These form the basis of this piece in order to showcase this tomatillo husk.

The Aztecs, along with the al of 260 days, and the solar calendar (xiuhpōhualli) consisted of 18 months of 20 days, plus 5 unlucky days for a total of 365 days.  Every 52 years these calendars would reset and start again using one of four symbols to denote the “year knot” along with a fire ceremony (and more sacrifices).

This piece utilizes just the 260-day (sacred calendar) and the 52-year cycle component in order to simplify a very complex concept of time.  The Aztec calendar makes our Gregorian version with its random number of days and leap years seem straightforward.

The sacred calendar is envisioned as two rotating gears; the outer gear has 20 different day signs, an assortment of animals, plants, natural forces, and other elements.  I stylized the animals, just using their eyes, and simplified the other elements.  The Nahuatl names and English translation are printed below on the base. The inner gear shows the 13 months represented by the numbering system of the Aztecs.  It takes 260 days for the two gears to complete enough rotations to go through all combinations once.

The tomatillo husk is suspended in the copper ring representing the 52-year cycle (xiuhmolpilli), with just four symbols: flint, reed, rabbit, and house.  Below this ring is Ollin, a symbol representing the cyclical movement of nature with respect to the four directions.