Wicklow-based artist Erica Devine has just returned from a working trip to the fashionable Marais district of Paris. She was there to install her botanical artwork in Jo Malone of London’s newly-opened flagship store on Rue Francs Bourgeois. Devine specializes in the art of botanical casting, creating highly detailed sculptural artwork and architectural features such as fireplace surrounds, recessed friezes and decorative walls.
Her sculpture captures the delicate beauty of the botanical world by pressing plants into a bed of softly yielding clay and then removing every last seed, root or leaf fragment. Into this impression she pours liquid plaster which sets, warm to the touch. Expanding ever so slightly, it captures the most infinitesimal botanical details such as the delicate hairs on a poppy stem, the curling tendrils of grapevine or the beautiful pattern of veins on an oak leaf to create real-life botanical ‘cameos’. It is a painstaking process that the former National Museum of Ireland conservator is highly skilled at.
“When an email from the design team of one of the worlds larget perfume retailers landed in my inbox, I did a double take. I’m a relatively low profile artist in rural Ireland. But they had seen my work on my instagram account @devine.erica, I sent them samples and they loved it. In terms of sheer size, requiring pieces nearly three metres tall, the project was technically ambitious and it really pushed the boundaries of the artform. In hindsight, my practice has benefitted hugely by perfecting the novel techniques required to fulfil the brief, but at the time I had to take a leap of faith to believe it was possible. I have to thank Jo Malone for keeping that faith too. The pieces took several months to make and then had to be transported by specialist art trucks with air ride suspension up the pot-holed road from my studio in a wooded valley in Wicklow. When they arrived safely in Paris, the champagne corks finally popped.”
“Working with Jo Malone of London was the perfect commission for me. They have distilled the signature scentscape of the garden of England with it’s rich tapestry of pastoral and metropolitan life, and my task was to capture that in visual form. I used oak, angelica, freesia, sweetpea, poppy, lavender, grapevine, honeysuckle and woodsage, all elements in their iconic perfumes, to create pieces that reflect their conoisseurship of that world”. Some of these plants she grew in her studio in the Garden County of Wicklow ; others were cut for her from the extensive herbaceous borders of Kilruddery House, the stately home of the Earls of Meath.
Her skills and inspiration have their roots in the UK, where she worked for the National Trust. “My time in the historic houses of England, and subsequently Ireland, led to a lasting appreciation of the decorative arts in all it’s forms, from exquisite plasterwork ceilings to extravagant ornamental gardens. My artistic practice is a combination of these sources of inspiration. I looked up and I looked out and I was enchanted”.
In her wider practice, Erica has collaborated with other artisans and designers, such as the award-winning furniture makers, Zelouf and Bell. Artwork commissioned by Millimetre Design and Taylor and Wolf grace the breakfast bar of the five star Powerscourt Hotel and the reception area of the Woodlands Hotel in Adare.
Innovation is at the heart of Erica’s work and she has created a wide range of products based on botanical casting that includes window panels, furniture panels, decorative candles, soap, and edibles such as chocolate and fondant. For those eager to learn her art, Erica has produced an online tutorial sponsored, fittingly, by Saint Gobain of Paris’s Irish subsidiary. It has already sold worldwide from Japan to the USA. Artisans looking for a standout product for a generation in love with the beauty of plants may find inspiration there.
“Immortalizing plants and flowers from the Garden County of Ireland on the walls of Paris, where Monet’s waterlilies hang and Van Gogh’s sunflowers were painted, has been a thrilling and rewarding experience. As the French say, je suis aux anges!”
Details of the online tutorial are available on at www.ericadevine.com.
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