STORY BEHIND THE ART OF MARTHA KEMP

Weird, Wild, & Wonderful

Second New York Botanical Garden Triennial Exhibition

2014 - 2016

Indian Pipe

Monotropa uniflora

Merely looking at this small plant caused me to smile: the sepals waving as if windblown, like tiny long-necked giraffes with fanciful faces and ears (even extra ears!) nodding in a breeze or nodding at their companions.

In 2005/6 a timber company in Northern California gave me access to specimens of a dozen different kinds of plants to draw as my theme for an exhibit at the Royal Horticultural Society in 2007. The botanist chose plants that she thought would represent a range of plant genera and would present challenging and interesting specimens for me to draw. Monotropa uniflora (Indian Pipe) was one of the specimens. When I exhibited at the RHS, I decided at literally the last moment not to hang this drawing because it was the only one on which I had drawn a background. One criterion for the medal judging is that an artist's exhibit should have a consistent and harmonious overall appearance, and it was my concern that this one striking difference might have an effect on the medal judging. Well, I received a Gold Medal [Editor’s note: 5th one so far], and I will never know what might have happened if I had included it. Now, I'm thrilled that this little drawing will be in the Weird, Wild and Wonderful show!

Several aspects of this plant made it seem weird and wonderful to me: the fact that it doesn't produce chlorophyll, thus has no green color or much of any color, for that matter; the fanciful waving motion of the sepals that makes the specimens look animated; and the dramatically changing form as the plant emerges, matures and dies. The pale little plant emerges from the woodland floor nodding downward as in the manner of a snowdrop, or looking a bit like a letter “p”: vertical stem with flower head looping down to touch it. As the stem lengthens, the flower head begins to lift until it passes through horizontal and up to a completely erect position during which time pollination has occurred, sepals have fallen away, and fruit is set. Next, plant tissues begin to dry, with variable results: perhaps retaining almost the original height of the specimen while becoming desiccated or perhaps causing the plant to shrink back down to the forest floor, now only a quarter of its fullest height and volume.

A botanical rendering in graphite pencil usually involves drawing and shading an image on white paper, but in this case (a translucent pinkish-white plant) the result would have been misleading: a grey-shaded specimen on white paper, when in fact the specimen itself is essentially white. So I decided to create a background by drawing a medium light value of graphite on the paper and let the white of the paper be the “color” of the little plants, in much the same way that they would stand out from the shadows and dim light where they grow on the woodland floor. Once that was in place, I could use light values to create volume in the specimen. The four upright "pipes" are about 5" tall, stretching up from the bottom edge of the drawing, and their curving, leaning, narrow, scale-lined stems either stand beside one another or slightly overlap. Lower down are three additional stems - one emerging new white plant and two tiny dark desiccated plants that are spent and have set fruit. The placement of the specimens in the ground largely determined the composition, but with tiny giraffes in mind I made sure to have the flower heads turned in ways that I hoped would suggest conversation and animation. 

This was definitely a stretch for me in terms of the challenge of a white plant on white paper. I had no idea at all how difficult it would prove to be to hand-draw an even-toned background of uniform value "behind" the image of the specimen.

I considered other subjects, too. For instance, in the Douglas Fir trees in the woods surrounding our home, I have seen a couple of examples of what is commonly called "witches' broom" –densely twiggy, abnormal and wildly overgrown tangles of plant tissue which look like a broom or bird’s nest - and mused about drawing one of them. Seeing them close-up would be essential to being able to draw them accurately, but they occur very high up in the trees and removal of them proved to be impossibly dangerous, so I had to put that idea aside. 

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