Natasha Bowdoin (American, born 1981)
Garden Plot, 2015-2018
PVC pipe, gouache and ink on cut paper and board
156 × 648 × 72 inches
Courtesy of the Artist and Talley Dunn Gallery

NorthPark Center welcomes a new piece located on Level Two above Macy's by artist Natasha Bowdoin. Inspired by the woods and waters of her childhood in Maine, Natasha Bowdoin’s work often references the natural world using sources such as botanical drawings, floral textile patterns, and lunar maps. Bowdoin investigates the intersections of the visual and the literary with layered ribbons of hand-written text and cut-paper reliefs. This particular work, Garden Plot, is a monumental, mixed-media piece composed of painting, drawing, and text layered in an explosive botanical garden of varying shapes and sizes; it spans over 40 feet in width and 10 feet in height.

Garden Plot grew out of a response to a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay entitled “Nature,” written in 1836. The essay is a meditation on how one relates to the greater natural world. Bowdoin began the work during a residency in Roswell, New Mexico. Struck by the spare desert setting, particularly in juxtaposition to the lush landscape of her hometown in Maine, she was inspired to create the flora that was absent from her surroundings in the Southwest.
 

Natasha Bowdoin received her MFA from the Tyler School of Art, PA. Her work has recently been exhibited in solo museum and gallery exhibitions at the SCAD Museum in Savannah; GA, MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA; The Visual Arts Center of Richmond in Richmond, VA; and The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, TX. Bowdoin lives and works in Houston, TX.

For more information about NorthPark's Art Collection, visit our virtual Art Tour and photo gallery.