Molly Hatch is an artist and designer who creates ceramic works like Physic Garden but also works in painting, printmaking, and drawing. Hatch often uses historical images, like prints and drawings, for inspiration for the design of her ceramic installations, which she calls “plate paintings.” Physic Garden was created by Hatch in 2014, specifically for the High Museum. The artist hand-painted 465 individual plates after finding her inspiration for the installation in two plates from 1755 in the High’s galleries. The flowers painted on those eighteenth-century plates were inspired by the Chelsea Physic Garden, a real garden that houses many medicinal plants.

Look closely at Hatch’s Physic Garden and the plates that inspired the work. Hatch combined the Chelsea plates and moved elements around to create a new composition. Can you find the insects from the plates in the artist’s work? What about the fruit, and the flowers? Imagine going to the Chelsea Physic Garden. What do you think the garden would smell like? What would it sound like?

Tejo Remy is a contemporary designer and artist, creating decorative art objects including furniture, wallpaper, and works such as You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory Chest of Drawers.

Decorative art explores the merging of function and aesthetics through form, material, process, place, and intent; sometimes, decorative artworks are meant to be used, other times they are for display only, and often, they can be for both.

Remy created multiple versions of You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory Chest of Drawers at different museums. For each of the works, Remy used drawers that people donated from the areas surrounding the museums. For the work at the High, the Museum sent out a statewide call for drawers; Remy then came to the Museum to piece together twenty of the most compelling drawers that were submitted.

To the artist, each drawer holds the memories of the original owners.

Look closely at You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory Chest of Drawers. What do the drawers have in common? How are they different?

Georgia O’Keeffe often found inspiration in nature and is well known for her close-up paintings of flowers. She made Red Canna after seeing red canna lilies when she was on vacation in New York. Does this canna lily look like any flower you have seen before? What types of flowers have you seen in nature? O’Keeffe was attracted to flowers’ bright, bold colors. How many colors can you find in this painting?