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.

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.”

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.