While the beauty of nature can be found pretty much whichever way you look – sometimes it needs a helping hand. Becoming something more than the process of photosynthesis and growth alone, artist Diana Scherer creates organic sculptures from the roots of plants by manipulating the patterns in which they grow.
Using oat and wheat seeds, Scherer uses a template to warp the roots into geometric grids and honeycomb arrangements that appear at once natural and unnatural. Of her technique, Scherer keeps the secret under wraps, wary of revealing a process developed over years.
As for the message below the surface – or should that be soil – Scherer says, “I think that people, they cherish nature, but on the other hand they are really quite cruel with nature. Like the gardener is telling us he loves nature, but the garden has to look like what he wants it to in his mind. He has to crop and prune and use poison. The roots that I domesticate, they have to do what I tell them.” Bending nature to her will, the pieces reflect a type of powerful beauty.
