The Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture at San Francisco Botanical Garden presents Beautiful Relationships: Flora and Fauna from Around the World, an exhibition of nature illustrations by Rachel Diaz-Bastin.
Bastin works in the entomology department at the California Academy of Sciences where she was inspired to learn from illustrators on staff and recently studied scientific illustration at UC Santa Cruz. She is known for her beautifully accurate illustrations of insects. She also illustrates spiders for publication in scientific journals as well as various plants and animals for researchers, conservation organizations, parks, and wildlife centers.
The colored pencil art in the exhibit focuses mainly on plants and animals of tropical and Mediterranean habitats worldwide, like crimson and Adelaide rosellas in a fig tree or African hoopoes surrounded by Madagascar jasmine. The artwork on view is also inspired by Bastin's interest in the relationships of plants and animals that suggest co-evolution, such as the Darwin's hawk moth with a proboscis evolved to reach down the long nectar spur of the Madagascar comet orchid, and the Hawaiian honeycreeper, whose beak is perfectly shaped to feed on curved lobelia flowers.
All works are available for purchase.
Presented by San Francisco Botanical Garden Society