It may be winter, but art is still blossoming at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Artist Jae Hi Ahn and the garden’s curator, Jennifer Williams, have created several sculptures, prints and glass terrariums for an exhibit at the Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery, the warmest place in the garden, opening on Dec. 3.
Ahn’s work consists of prints and mixed-media sculptures of artificial landscapes made from artificial materials, while Williams is contributing miniature environments under glass structures, some only a few inches wide.
“At heart, the exhibit explores the tension between naturalistic environments made out of artificial materials and artificial environments made out of natural materials,” said Brooklyn Botanic Garden spokeswoman Kate Blumm.
Horticulture fans will have much to look at.
Williams’s terrariums will contain ferns, mosses, Venus fly traps, and pitcher plants that you would never find occurring in nature in the same place. And Ahn’s prints and sculptures are evocative of delicate flowers, which she studied in the garden’s Aquatic House.
Best of all, the Garden is free on weekdays and Saturday mornings during the winter — a perfect free break from your Christmas shopping.
“Terrarium: Artworks by Jae Hi Ahn and Jennifer Williams” at Brooklyn Botanic Garden [900 Washington Ave. near Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, (718) 623-7200]. Dec. 3–Feb. 26. For info, visit www.bbg.org.
Reach reporter Aaron Short at ashort@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2547.
