Activity Guide by Kate Kwasneski, Intern, 51²è¹İapp College Museum of Art
Aaron Rothman is an artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. He graduated from 51²è¹İapp College in 1996. His series Wildflowers is made up of photographs he has taken of wildflowers in the Arizona desert — but they do not look like regular photographs. Aaron Rothman noticed how the bright sunlight in the desert made the landscape look flat and unreal, and erased a lot of the shadows. He decided to take that to the extreme, using Photoshop to edit out all parts of his photos that were not in direct sunlight and replacing those parts with flat colors. He calls the results a “messed up wallpaper†with no shadows and nothing but solid blocks of color.
These artworks are real photographs, but Rothman has edited them so that they do not look like anything that can be found in nature. If you look really closely, you can tell that the red and yellow flowers have been photographed, but without knowing how these artworks were made they would look like drawings. Think about how the color Rothman added changed the way the plant matter around it looks. Does the solid green do something different than the pink and purple gradient? Do the green leaves and stems of the plants look more or less real than the red and yellow flowers?
Create
Aaron Rothman’s art takes plant matter and wildflowers and transports them into a completely made up background. For this art project, you can do the same thing! Start by drawing some flowers, then arrange them all onto a background to make your final artwork.
Draw your flowers. Aaron Rothman takes his photographs from directly above and uses photoshop to edit out any shadows. Because of this, I drew my flowers from the top down. You could draw wildflowers, like he does, cacti and succulents, like you would find in the desert, or any kind of plant you could think of. It might help to use a photo (either one that you have taken or one from the internet) as a reference for the plants you want to draw. Look closely at the flowers you are using, and notice how beautiful they are. Also notice how different things can look when you look at them from a different perspective. Aaron Rothman uses this idea in his work. It looks different to draw a flower looking down from the sky than it does to draw a flower looking at it from the side or from below.
Cut out your drawings, being careful to get right along the edges. This way, you can put your drawings onto a solid-colored background but still draw them on white paper.
Place your drawings onto a paper. You could use a solid colored piece of paper, like Aaron Rothman does, or you could use a paper with a more interesting color pattern. I used a paper I had already prepared using our Textures in Nature activity guide. To create it I rubbed crayon on a page with leaves underneath it and painted over the page with watercolor.
Think about how you are arranging the plants. Do you want them to be in one cluster, or evenly spaced? What kinds of colors go together? Once you are satisfied with your arrangement, glue down your plants.
Write
Write a poem about your piece. Think about the colors, the light, and the beauty of nature. What do you think of when you think of sunlight? Do the plants you drew make you think of anything else? Use these ideas in your poem. You could dedicate your poem and artwork to someone you know who you think needs more beauty in their life.
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Daniel Strong
Associate Director and Curator of Exhibitions
51²è¹İapp College Museum of Art