Hey everyone. My name is Juanita Magnetek. I am taking Intro to Flora for my ethnobotany minor but also for my own gratification. I try to get out often and explore what is sprouting, blooming or fruiting in my environment and to keep tabs on the stages of growth during the season. I do a lot of planting, maintenance and watering on the UAF campus. We have just mostly finished planting for summer. Now comes the fun of watching it grow to maturity and harvesting. While I am an art major, botany is perhaps just as interesting to me, if not more so. It is very wonderful to be studying and interacting with the Flora of Alaska interior, as this summer is brief and fleeting if we do not take notice. I believe I will be using my iPhone for the dissections, however, I will very much like to use a magnifying device to perform the task. I am thinking seriously about the visor, so I will most likely make that purchase today.
I am unable to pick a favorite plant or flower. There are too many variations and qualities. I will show a few wild things I have snapped photos of this spring and summer so far…
Welcome Juanita,
it is great to have you in class, I hope we can bring the flowers even closer to you and inspire some more amazing art pieces. Thanks for posting all these great plant (and animal) images. I love incorporating plants into some of my art, be it in painting, but also alternative photographic processes. I would highly recommend Jason Lazarus courses at UAF. Some of my work can be seen on my webpage https://www.frontierbotany.info/botanical-art/, and I am attaching one here too. This is a lumen, and I use expired black and white photographic paper and then you place a plant on top of the paper and exposed it to the sun for several hours, and magically the phytochemicals in the plant will react with the emulsion of the paper and turn it into some spectacular hues of color. Below: Wicked baneberry – glistening seeds that may stop the heart.