Gregory Page: Motifs from the Global Backyard

AAP Spring 2014 Exhibitions

Motifs from the Global Backyard emerged as a body of work investigating horticultural specimens both near and far. A visit to Rome inspired Associate Professor Greogory Page, art, to seek visual connections between his horticultural subjects and architectural motifs from antiquity. Several of the works are of various plant specimens from greenhouses at Illinois State University. Two prints were produced while at the Edinburgh Printmakers with plants sourced from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland. Also included are plant specimens from the Cornell Plantations' greenhouse collection.

The work includes lithographic prints produced in the technique that Page discovered in 2002 and was first demonstrated at the Frontiers in Printmaking Conference in 2007 at Illinois State University. A short film, completed in 2010 by Lindsey Glover (M.F.A. '08) and Page, demonstrates the horticultural lithographic techniques employed to produce the prints.

As an active gardener, Page has several perennial and vegetable gardens at his home where his backyard serves as a place of research and opportunity to observe plants in an endless cycle of investigation, design, and regeneration.