Art, nature, and the poet Emily Dickinson are intertwined in a new exhibition this spring. Herbarium & Chromotaxia : Selections from This Earthen Door by Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey is on view at Rick Wester Fine Art in Chelsea. The exhibition is an homage to the poet’s botanical devotion, comprised of images made from plant pigments grown in the artists’ own gardens.
Before Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) gained her reputation as a leading American poet of the 19th century, she was known by family and friends for her passion in gardening. Barely published during her lifetime, it was her sister who uncovered her poetry posthumously and proceeded to publish it. Born into a family of gardeners, Dickinson tended to a large garden at her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, sending fresh bouquets to friends and family (often with poems attached, known as “nosegays”), and studied botany at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke. The title of This Earthen Door is derived from Dickinson’s poem “We can but follow to the Sun” (We go no further with the Dust; Than to the Earthen Door—) More than a third of her poems reference flowers and plants.
For This Earthen Door Marchand and Sobsey developed a project rooted in Emily Dickinson’s botanical studies. Using anthotype, a plant-and light-based photographic process invented during Dickinson’s era, the exhibition presents a highly pigmented monochromatic re-imagining of the 66 pages of Dickinson’s herbarium, which contains over 400 different species. Housed in the Houghton Library’s Emily Dickinson Collection at Harvard University, they used photographs of the pages as a basis for their work. Complementing the anthotypes, is a series of choromotaxys, or color classifications, composed of grids of pigment from the juices of 66 flowers, symbolizing their shared properties and poetic associations. These works form the artists’ own 21st century herbarium.
Concurrent with the exhibition at the gallery, Rick Wester Fine Art will also present a selection of the work at The Photography Show presented by AIPAD from April 23 through 27, 2025, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Additionally, on May 25, The Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, will present This Earthen Door through September 7, 2025. A recent monograph of the same title was published in 2024 by Datz Press (Seoul, Korea).
Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey : This Earthen Door
April 10 – June 27, 2025
Rick Wester Fine Art
526 W 26th St #417
New York, NY 10001
(212) 255-5560
www.rickwesterfineart.com
