My Word with Douglas E. Welch

British artist Helen Ahpornsiri brings whole new meaning to botanical illustration with her incredible artwork made from pressed flowers and leaves. Her delicate compositions depict the diversity of the natural world, from mammals and birds to insects and sea creatures.

 
Using real flowers, petals, stems, and leaves, Ahpornsiri responsibly forages her materials from her own garden and local nature spots. Each botanical component is carefully chosen to celebrate its natural form, and in some works, the artist even uses specific components to correspond with her subject’s natural habitat. In one piece, a seahorse is crafted from tiny pieces of red marine algae, and in another, a majestic blue whale is made entirely from pressed seaweed. “The marine algae I use is foraged from beaches on the south coast of England,” Ahpornsiri reveals. “I search for loose pieces of marine algae along strandlines and in rockpools, especially after stormy seas, to avoid being disruptive to the surrounding ecosystem.”

Netflix has made all eight episodes of its documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design, which features set designer Es Devlin, architect Bjarke Ingels and interior designer Ilse Crawford, available to watch for free during coronavirus lockdown.

Streaming company Netflix has made season one of its design series available on Youtube as part of an initiative to make its documentaries free to watch during the coronavirus lockdown.

The Smithsonian Institution is releasing 2.8 million high-res images from its massive collection into the public domain, putting them online for anyone to use and download for free. The open-access online platform will include 2D and 3D images from its 19 museums, nine research centers, archives, libraries, and the National Zoo, Smithsonian Magazine reports.

“Being a relevant source for people who are learning around the world is key to our mission,” Effie Kapsalis, the Smithsonian’s senior digital program officer, says. “We can’t imagine what people are going to do with the collections. We’re prepared to be surprised.”

 

Paris Musées, a collection of 14 museums in Paris have recently made high-res digital copies of 100,000 artworks freely available to the public on their collections website. Artists with works in the archive include Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso, Cézanne, and thousands of others.