Phtologically Speaking: A Windward Exhibit Ritualizes Extinction
April 2001
Using canvas and cuttings, artist and scientist join forces to expose the plight of island phytology in a still-life exhibit called Stations: Endangered Native Polynesian and Exotic Plants of Hawai'i.
Preparations began last year when Jean Gallagher, art professor at California State University, Chico, went hiking with the late, great local botanist Charles Lamoureux to photography endangered plant species.
The sobering trip compelled Gallagher to take oil to canvas based on the photos chosen by Lamoureux. She took artistic license with color, starting out with reds and orange "representing their struggle to survive," which fade as the plants begin to lose that fight. There are fourteen stations in the exhibit (inspired by Christianity's "Fourteen Stations of the Cross") meant to invoke the rituals of persecution and loss in our extended biological family. Each station is fitted with a "phyto-sculpture" by Windward Community College botanist Ingelia White. White's large scale arrangements of native vegetation as well as the alien species threatening them—Polynesian ethnobotanicals and post Captain Cook exotics.
Efforts to save these plants are working to some degree, but it's not enough, according to Gallagher, as funding more often goes to the fight to save endangered animals.