Amanda Marchand

This eco-feminist collaboration with artist Leah Sobsey re-works Emily Dickinson’s herbarium (botanical sampler) via Anthotypes, a plant-based photo process invented during Dickinson’s era just as photography was being born. During her life Dickinson was not famous for her poetry, but for her green thumb, with an extensive garden and educated in botany. Our project re-makes her 66 herbarium pages with plant pigments from 66 species that we grew and harvested in our own gardens - and that Dickinson grew, among the 400+ herbarium species.

We partnered with scientists Kyra Krakos and Peter Grima to expand upon Emily’s flower sampler in a second iteration. The color schemas are “data drawings,” our own, abstratcted, 21st-Century herbarium, a sumptuous study of color, telling plant stories through Dickinson’s world of flowers - a portal between the past and present. This work considers the current state of climate chaos, investigating our connection to nature - and asks where Emily would point us today.