Foraged Art: Creating Projects Using Blooms, Branches, Leaves, Stones, and Other Elements Discovered in Nature

by Peter Cole, Leslie Jonath

Overview

In the spirit of land artists like Andy Goldsworthy, the book is as much about discovery as it is about creation. Leaves shaped like lips might inspire a face; an array of rocks might be become an eclectic mosaic; winter’s first snow might be carved into glowing luminaria.

Whether you love to look for heart-shaped flowers or want to make a peacock made with flower petals, readers will find great inspiration and joy in Foraged Art.

Art, meditation, and nature meet in this adult focused activity book, with projects that take inspiration from the natural environment, using blooms, pods, branches, stones, and other natural elements. Divided into chapters by natural elements — flowers, leaves, rocks and pods, and more, the book will encourage readers to forage and play outside using nature's seasonal art box. With quotes by artists on nature and creativity, the book is about making art from what you find and finding art in what you see.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681882598
Publisher:	Weldon Owen
Publication date:	06/05/2018
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Peter Cole is an artist and maker who makes beautiful art in nature. In addition to carving the Mona Lisa into pumpkin, he has sculpted a bath-tub out of snow, and made Bilbao out of sand. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, he is an avid collector of rocks, shells, bones, photographs, keys and other objects which he transforms into unusual art pieces. With his wife, he has been a long-time vendor at the Brooklyn flea. He is the author of many books about ephemeral art including Snowmen, Great Pumpkins, and Sandcastles.

Leslie Jonath is an author, a book packager and producer specializing in content for food, art, design, and children's projects. She is the author of many books including Snowmen, Everyone Loves Paris, Give Yourself A Gold Star and Love Found. She lives in San Francisco.

Read an Excerpt

Grass-Lined Steps - Adorn a plain set of concrete steps with stripes of living color.
 
The bold, colorful, strappy leaves of a New Zealand flax plant come in bright shades of yellow, pink, red, and bronze. Excellent as container plants, flax plants can also be spectacular planted in the ground—in a garden or along a walkway.
 
Here, the neutral grey of the concrete makes an ideal background on which to affix vertical stripes of color. Recontextualizing the radiating leaves as flat surfaces also highlights the smooth texture of the leaves and the striations in color.
 
Rather than bringing the outdoors in, this treatment brings the indoors out: When lined up in strips, the broad, sword-shaped leaves begin to look like wallpaper.
 
After attaching the blades to the step, they’re trimmed to size, making each embellished rise a work of art.
 
Tools and Techniques
For this project you’ll need large, well-sharpened, sturdy scissors or garden shears, a ruler, and a roll of removable double-sided tape, available online or in craft supply stores (other kinds of glues may leave residues or be hard to remove).
 
If you don’t have access to flax, you can create this effect using different kinds of leaves and wide grasses.
 
Field Guide
Gather: Collect the leaves of flax plants or similar leaves and grasses. Make sure they’re in good condition and free of spots. Choose long leaves that are consistent in size with even edges. Using sharp scissors, harvest the leaves close to the root. If you’re harvesting from living plants, select only a few outer leaves to make sure there’ll be no lasting damage.
 
Compose: This project is best done on smooth steps that have a back riser. Arrange the blades with similar widths and hues. Notice how stripes of various colors take on new beauty when placed on a flat surface.
 
Create: Measure the height of each riser. Use the ruler, or hold the leaf against the step to measure each blade to size. Then use the scissors to cut each blade of grass to length. Design your pattern on the ground, grouping blades with similar widths or hues. Adhere each leaf to the step vertically with removable double-sided tape.
 
Leave No Trace: When you’re ready to disband your Grass-Lined Steps, remove and discard the tape and let the leaves return to nature.
 

Editorial Reviews

From creating spirals made of individual fern leaves, to sculpting leaf creatures- playfully designed with various leaves and tendrils of vines- to making “skirts” for trees with leaves arranged artfully around its base, creating foraged art becomes a creative adventure in which your only limitation is your imagination.

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