Museum Visit: The Putnam Museum and Science Center

A few months ago we took a family trip to Davenport, IA, to visit one of my drawings. The artwork is part of the Tails from Tales exhibition at the Putnam Museum and Science Center. Tails from Tales features taxidermy displays and art inspired by various children’s picture books. The exhibition will be on display until May 2024. 

Come one, come all!

I was one of 19 local (from Iowa and Illinois) illustrators chosen to have their art in the exhibit. We created our pieces, then sent digital image files to the museum. The artwork was then reproduced large-scale; my drawing, titled “The Tree of Life,” was reproduced at twice its original size with a faux frame around it!

I love that the exhibition logo is a book with a fox tail for a bookmark!

My drawing is inspired by the book The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. In the book, a man comes to chop down a large tree in the rainforest. He gets tired and lays down to rest. While he is sleeping, many animals (and even a little boy) whisper in his ear about why the tree is important to their ecosystem. When he wakes up, he sets down his axe and leaves.

“Tree of Life” pen and ink drawing on watercolor paper by Haley McAndrews, original size 24”x24”

The pen and ink drawing shows the silhouette of a large tree. Inside the tree is a variety of plants and animals native to the rainforest. There is a small silhouette of a person with an axe at the base of the tree, and even a weeping cut into the tree near him. I did play around with adding some digital color to the piece but in the end I decided to keep it black and white.

I lost track of how many hours I worked on this drawing, but I wanted it to have so many details that a visitor to the museum could come back and look at it over and over again, and still find something new in the tree. There are animals and plants of all types and sizes, including a jaguar, puma, iguanas, various insects, birds, flowers, leaves, and bees. There is even one small boy (who also comes to the tree cutter in the book.) The jungle in the background has a few different types of textures – from lines to dots to geometric swirls (a texture that has reoccurred in my artwork since I was 16.)

My youngest and I posing with my drawing!

I chose The Great Kapok Tree as my inspiration because I have an affinity for trees in my artwork already (which you can read about here). I grew up in a military family (we moved across the country more than once) so trees represent both growing up as well as putting down roots and having a history in one place. This drawing, showing all the different animals that would be affected by the tree being cut down, is a perfect example of a tree of life.

I don’t know about you, but I could spend hours here.

In addition to the art on the walls, there is a cozy reading area set up with benches, a soft rug, pillows for sitting on, and many of the books featured in the exhibition! This way, visitors could read the stories that make up the display. While I didn’t take pictures of everything in the Tails from Tales exhibit, I will show you some of my favorites (to see the full exhibition, go visit the Putnam!)

You know, the story where the mouse saves the lion from the net!

There are also taxidermy displays that depict different books and stories as well! The one above showed the lion caught in the net with a small mouse near his front feet, from the “The Lion and the Mouse” from Aesop’s Fables. Another display showed a tiger in a jungle, from The Jungle Book.

The Polar Bear Son is a story about an unconventional family.

This display featured a polar bear and Inuit, showing a scene from The Polar Bear Son, an Inuit tale retold by Lydia Dabcovich. In this story, an Inuit woman adopts and raises a polar bear as her own son.

“Minn of the Mississippi” digital art by Atlanta Dawn, original size 24”x30”

This piece immediately caught my eye! It has the style and feel of a woodcut, but was actually created digitally by artist Atlanta Dawn. I love the warm, muted, five-color palette. The details and textures in this illustration are beautifully rendered. This piece was inspired by the book Minn of the Mississippi, by Holling Clancy Holling.

“Light and Shadow – Survival” hand-painted, kiln-fired stained glass by Sam McFarland, original size 21”x22”

This piece, inspired by Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, was created by Sam McFarland out of stained glass! It shows five realistic animals (one predator and four prey) painted by hand on the glass as well as a rocky landscape and green foliage, all hand painted on glass. The geometric border around the scene is brightly colored in the three primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, and gives the whole piece a great energy with repeating black lines and dots.

"The Wind in the Willows, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" digital painting by Jason Platt, original size 38.5"x48"

This digital painting by Jason Platt is inspired by The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. I’ve read this book a few times since I was a kid, as I will always adore anthropomorphic animal characters in books. Platt was able to accurately convey the mixture of both joy and terror caused by Mr. Toad’s reckless driving.

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" digital collage by Kelvin Mason, original size 48"x48"

A favorite book in our house, our copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar has seen better days. I’ve never seen a rendition quite like this one by Kelvin Mason! I love the little violet shoes on the butterfly’s feet, and the way Mason digitally collaged the various foods to create the butterfly wings.

"A Party for Pooh" digital illustration by Kylie Morency, original size 48"x32"

The last piece I’ll mention specifically is also digitally created. The word I keep returning to to describe this illustration is “soft.” The colors are soft, not too bright, and the outlines aren’t in black but instead in the same hue as the solid colors. The style and characters are drawn in a distinct, adorable way. My girls also loved this piece – enough to pose with it!

There is so much more to see in the Tails from Tales exhibit, I couldn’t possibly fit it all into one blog post. And this only covers one room in the Museum and Science Center! We really loved exploring the different levels of the building, and my girls were well-engaged the whole time (their favorites were the interactive parts, of course!)

Visitors to the Putnam Museum and Science Center will be able to experience the Tails from Tales exhibit until May 2024. You can find more information about it on the Putnam’s website, www.putnam.org. You can also follow the Putnam on Facebook.

Glass in Flight at Reiman Gardens

There is a special exhibition this year at Reiman Gardens in Ames, IA. Glass in Flight consists of 19 sculptures by Alex Heveri and will remain on display until October 8, 2023. Heveri, a sculpture artist from Arizona, has been working with steel and Dalle de Verre glass for over 25 years. "Dalle de Verre" is French, meaning "glass slab." It is a medium similar to stained glass, but the key difference is the thickness of the glass. Stained glass is usually thin, the same thickness as a window pane, while Dalle de Verre is made from thick chunks which produces deeper colors in the art. You can easily see (both in person and in photos) that the edges of the glass in Heveri's series have been chipped - this technique increases the refraction of light through the sculptures.

Yay, flowers!

This was my first trip to Reiman Gardens, and it would have been a wholly delightful experience had we not been under a heat advisory that day! Regardless, our family had a wonderful, albeit sweaty, time there. 

The first stop was, of course, the butterfly wing. My girls thought it was a magical place, and couldn't believe how many butterflies were there! The butterfly exhibit has hundreds of butterflies, from 80 different species! I'll admit I've never seen butterflies before that actually looked happy as they flew in and out of the foliage! However, these were not the butterflies that I was looking for.

As soon as we stepped out of the building, we were greeted by blistering heat - I mean, sculptures within the landscape. To my pleasant surprise, not all of the sculptures in the Gardens were a part of Heveri's Glass in Flight! 

Expand by Tom Reife. Stainless steel, 2016

This stainless steel sculpture by Tom Riefe reminds me of a burst of flames! But the geometric and symmetrical design also reflects patterns found in nature, which is appropriate for the Gardens.

Blue Dasher by Alex Heveri

I didn’t take photos of every single piece Heveri has at the Gardens, as ideally you dear readers will get the chance to see them yourselves! The first one I photographed is “Blue Dasher,” a beautiful royal blue dragonfly with clear wingtips. I love that the stand is also a part of the art, resembling a segmented reed or bamboo.

Continuing along the path, we came to a drool-worthy herb garden (pun fully intended.) It’s been a dream of mine to have a small herb garden, and while I did keep an oregano plant alive in a pot for three years, the most I ever do with herb plants is lovingly smell them a few times a week (shout out to Jon, who does 99.99% of the cooking in our home.) Maybe someday, because this herb garden at Reiman was beautiful, aromatic, and huge!

 
Pink Amethyst by Alex Heveri

Past the herb garden, we found twin “Pink Amethyst” butterflies. The butterflies were unique among the Glass in Flight sculptures in that their wings weren’t made from glass mosaics but huge slabs of stone! I knew amethyst came in a whole rainbow-range of colors, but according to the plaque for these two sculptures, there are no pink butterflies! How fascinating!

If I had a large enough yard, I wouldn't mind having a couple of these myself.

We found multiple pieces like this embedded in the foliage. They didn’t have informational plaques, so I don’t know who to give credit to. Within each larger “frame” were a group of smaller frames with a variety of dried leaves pressed and preserved between panes of glass. An odd little display, but worthy of mention regardless.

 
Tailed Jay by Alex Heveri

The next three pieces were my favorites – this one, “Tailed Jay,” is a lovely emerald-colored butterfly. It has a twisting metal base, with multiple swirling lines and small colorful glass accents. I took a picture from underneath to really express how fun this one is. It can’t be easy to create the flight of a butterfly in metal, but Heveri found a way.

 

More Bees Please! by Alex Heveri

This lovely archway is my other favorite of Heveri’s sculptures in the Glass in Flight series! While I personally have an irrational fear of stinging insects, I know how essential they are to our ecosystems – and how endangered they are, too! This rust-colored arc is composed of many hexagons; some open, some filled with weathered metal, and others filled with amber-colored glass. 3-Dimensional bees with transparent yellow bodies are swarmed all over the archway. A fitting tribute to honeycomb!

 

By Dale Lewis

Another beautiful piece of art, the third favorite of mine, is a small cherry (I think they are supposed to be cherries, at least) tree made of silverware. The name at the base says “Dale Lewis,” but that’s all I know about it. The sculptor used spoons for leaves, and wrapped fork tines around to hold the “berries.”

Yellow Stag Beetle by Alex Heveri

Heveri’s sculptures aren’t limited to just dragonflies and butterflies; this one is a Yellow Stag Beetle! It’s found in the middle of a feast of mulch and branches, which is exactly what real yellow stag beetles eat!

 
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail by Alex Heveri

At the far end, right next to the Gardens’ iconic hexagonal wood tower, is the colorful Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Bright yellow, blue, and orange stand out next to the clear and stark black stripes. An excellent example of dalle de verre, it’s well worth the trek back to see.

It pains me to stop here without mentioning so many, many other cool artistic features and artworks we saw at the Reiman Gardens that day; from trained-into-arches trees, farm animals made of peat with flowers for bodies, a giant gnome, to vine-like handrails and so much more! These gardens in Ames were absolutely worth the sweat-soaked clothes I had at the end of our trip. I’d really like to come back in other seasons to see the different displays.

Heveri’s Glass in Flight exhibition will be on display until October 8^th, 2023. I hope you take the time to see it before it leaves Ames! To learn more about what’s going on at Reiman Gardens, you can find them on Facebook plus their website www.ReimanGardens.com is packed full of information.

What a dork!

Our Trip to the Pappajohn Sculpture Park!

I find it confusing that "Artist" as a career is still discouraged for young people, when we use art and design to represent ourselves everyday. Who doesn't instantly recognize a 20-foot yellow "M" or a lowercase blue "f"? How about a little white ghost on a yellow background? Even our cities define and advertise themselves with their sculptures: like the cherry and spoon (Spoonbridge and Cherry) in Minneapolis, the Statue of Liberty in New York, and of course, the figure made of letters (Nomade) in Des Moines.

Nomade, 2007, painted stainless steel

We made the trip to the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park this summer, of which Nomade, by Jaume Plensa, is the crown jewel. I had only been there once before, and it was really neat to see it through the eyes of my young daughters. The sculpture is huge and hollow, and looks like it was pieced together with an assortment of letters. There’s a cement path that goes right up to and underneath it, which enables you to walk inside the sculpture. My girls loved searching among the letters to spell out their own names.

 

Panoramic awareness pavilion, 2013, glass, metal, light

Their favorite piece, hands down, was Panoramic awareness pavilion, by Olafur Eliason. It's a large circular structure made of numerous glass panels. Each panel is a single color, with mirrored edges. The colors are arranged in a rainbow gradient with a large light in the center. Sadly, we were there in the bright afternoon sun, so we didn't see it lit up.

Moonrise. east. january, 2005 and Moonrise. east. august, 2006, painted cast aluminum on steel plinth

I was pleasantly surprised when I made my way around a giant pair of bulbous sculptures that turned out to be heads! Moonrise. east. january and Moonrise. east. august by Ugo Rindinone, have an incredible hand-built texture to them - as opposed to some of the more refined, manufactured pieces (that's right, I'm talking about you, Robert Indiana!) I loved their whimsical, creepy expressions, but I don't think my children were particularly fond of the pair.

 
Post Balzac, 1990, cast bronze

Thinker on a Rock, 1997, bronze  and Ancient Forest, 2009, cast bronze

I'm not sure I have a favorite piece, but if I did it would be one of the next four: an upright coat, a contemplating rabbit, or one of the driftwood-looking horses. Post Balzac, by Judith Shea, is a bronze casting that looks like it is the coat belonging to an invisible man. It has an energy, waiting there, like it could be put back on and worn at any time. Thinker on a Rock, by Barry Flanagan, is a sculpture of a cartoony hare perched upon, you guessed it, a rock. The sculpture is made of bronze, and I think what attracts me to it is that it could easily be a 3D rendition of a children’s book character. The cast bronze horses, titled Ancient Forest, look like they are created from an assemblage of driftwood. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had just walked out of a fantasy story into the sculpture garden.

Love, 1966-1999, polychrome aluminum

Robert Indiana is one of my dad's favorite artists, so I couldn't pass up the chance to take a photo of one of his iconic LOVE sculptures. It never fails to amaze me when I get the chance to see artwork in person that I remember studying in art history.

Pumpkin (L), designed 2014 fabricated 2018, bronze

I was delighted to discover Pumpkin (L) by Yayoi Kusama as at the time of our trip, as I was only days away from completing the illustrations for "My Day at the Pumpkin Patch" (written by Kelli Heil.) I really like the clean, circular design of this piece, and if it was a more portable size I would love to have one in my house in the fall!

White Ghost, 2010, fiberglass

The last piece I took a photo of (there are plenty more sculptures at the park) was White Ghost by Yoshitomo Nara, which has its own Google Maps marker (impressive!) I really thought my girls would like this one, but my youngest said the face was scary. I think it was the overwhelming size of the piece that intimidated her the most. Made of white fiberglass, this sculpture also feels like a children’s book character come to life.

 

If you are in the area and have the chance to see the Pappajohn Sculpture Park. There are visitor guides available, as well as a cell phone tour. The sculpture park is an extension of the Des Moines Art Center, and more information about the art and the park can be found at DesMoinesArtCenter.org.