Mare's Nests

Works in Progress
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This proposed series of drawings is inspired by Beatrix Potter's attempts at breaking through the barriers of the male-dominated domain of Victorian botany.  An ambitious amateur mycologist, Beatrix studied the local mushrooms and fungi found in northern England.   In 1897 Beatrix submitted a self illustrated paper, “On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae,” to London’s Linnaean Society.  Her ideas were dismissed by members of the society as "mare's nests"; false discoveries, illusions, or a deliberate hoax.

These drawings imagine my own sculptures of hybrid creatures made of hair and horn, in imagined spaces based on areas near my childhood and current homes.  Through the composite images, we discover these creatures as they lay in their nests, in a way similar to how I imagine Beatrix discovered the fungi and lichens of the Yorkshire countryside.