Atlanta artist Steven L. Anderson goes between the ferns
Photo Credit: valentin sivyakov By Felicia Feaster, For the AJC
An understudy in the plant kingdom takes on a starring role in this botanical celebration.
Atlanta’s contemporary art galleries have never seemed so fixated on thistles, wildflowers, cypress trees and Spanish moss as they are this spring with myriad shows looking at mortality, the Southern landscape, scientific classification and technological intervention through the lens of nature.
And for Atlanta artist Steven L. Anderson it’s all about the fern. Anderson uses two scientific tomes of botanical drawings “Ferns of Georgia” and “How to Know the Ferns” (also the title of this solo show at Kai Lin Art) as jumping off points for what he hopes might be a more fitting celebration of these “mesmerizing, wise, forest weirdies.”
Instead of offering technically proficient botanical studies, Anderson’s drawings and paintings represent multiple poetic efforts to capture what might be called the “spirit” of the fern.
Anderson does a deep dive into that prehistoric plant in “How to Know the Ferns” an exhibition that blends the botanical study, formal experimentation and a light dusting of anthropomorphic psychedelia.
Within the lexicon of plant life, the fern is a worthy subject. One of the most ancient of plants originating millions of years ago, the fern hides a complex universe — and some idiosyncratic reproductive strategies — within its fronds. “How to Know the Ferns” feels like an anthology in which a slate of artists are asked to interpret a subject within their particular style. But here it’s one artist offering multiple interpretations. And so we have rich, romantic embossed works like “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” where the lacey fronds and dangling exposed roots of the fern are rendered in gold leaf on a Chairman Mao-red background. Those works read like love letters to a beloved, cherished entity.
A neighboring artwork, “My Joyous Wisdom” in acrylic, spray paint and oil pastel is a celebratory paean to nature. In it a fern is surrounded by halos composed of multiple rings of color. The work recalls Anderson’s previous paintings of the endless rings of cross-sectioned trees. This is a fern in charismatic, life-of-the-party mode. And at its base, coiled in red, an embryonic fiddlehead waits to emerge.
The ferns in Anderson’s work are rendered in varying degrees of realism, from an abstracted version to a detailed, multidimensional fern. The diversity and eccentricity that speaks to the botanist also sucks in an artist who has found a complex subject worthy of his time.
A sort of symphonic, cacophonous fern exists in Anderson’s “Everything Everywhere All At Once” evoking study. Titled “Everything Which is Natural, Which is Infinite, Which is Yes” the work in paint and ink is a beautifully joyous fern festival in which a variety of plants in shades of lime, ochre and jade cavort like stars dancing in the night sky or the figures in Matisse’s “Dance.” In “Dreamers of Pictures” a lush emerald-colored fern is placed next to a thin, merlot-colored plant and the duo look like nothing so much as buddies posing for a photo.
although some works admittedly convey Anderson’s rapture better than others. But it’s hard not to admire an artist who can make one ponder the subtleties of something more often trampled underfoot on a nature walk.
VISUAL ART REVIEW
“How to Know the Ferns”
Through April 21. Noon-6 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays; noon-5 p.m. Saturdays. Free. Kai Lin Art, 999 Brady Ave. NW, #7, Atlanta. 404-408-4248, kailinart.com.
Bottom line: A little silly, a little profound, this ode to the fern answers science with sentiment.
