See what I do, what inspires me, which books I read, and who I follow.

See my art portfolio here.

Mary, National Danish Children’s Hospital

When your child is hospitalized, your family’s entire world is turned upside down. The Upside-Down Garden is a site specific artinstallation with plants as the main material. It aims to give children, parents, and staff in the neonatal and pediatric cancer wards access to nature. The installation includes a 50 m² ceiling-mounted garden, a giant debarked ash tree that offers both climbing and hiding spaces, and a shelf with 48 vases designed by the children admitted to the pediatric cancer ward.

Larch Grove Museums

Maria Viftrup and I created the large-scale nature-based artworks Larch Grove Museums for a publich housing area in Denmark. The work comprises 150 brass poles each carrying a glass bell with samples of biodiversity and human leftovers from the area. The longest poles will support vulnerable branches of 15 old iconic larch trees in the park designed by one of the most famous Danish landscape architects C.T.H. Sørensen. The buildings are designed by renowned Danish architect Kay Fisker.

Herningsholm Agricultural School

The newly built school is the first climate-focused agricultural school and the first new agricultural school in Denmark in 40 years. I created the entire artistic decoration, based on the concepts that are crucial for the agriculture of the future: photosynthesis, fertilization, and alteration of generations. At the same time, the works reflect and elaborate on the past, present, and future of agriculture.

Plant Parade

Supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Maria Viftrup and I created The Plant Parade, inspired by photo walls from traditional fairgrounds, to communicate plant biodiversity through art — in a place where people meet it in their everyday lives - the shopping center. The exhibition was presented alongside a series of plant workshops for children at the local children’s library.

Root / System

A wild exhibition about roots and their wonderful systems — in a former prison. Roots absorb nutrients, form part of diverse networks, create communication between trees, form soil structure and is the foundation for the production apparatus which enables the circulation of life.

Maria Viftrup and I examined the systems that unfold below and above ground. We looked at underground structures as a colossal organic factory where all life and death is produced and repeated. In the old Vridsløselille Prison on the Renæssancejord exhibition platform, we filled the cells with drawings in soil, roots that crawl out of cells, systematic factories and root shadows on paper.

Sand

With @detgråfyr, Danish Nature Agency and Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark. At Det Grå Fyr, Skagen. April 8th, 2023 through October 2023.

An exhibition about the wonders and use of sand as 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 sand grains, sand as the second most used raw materiale in the world, and sand becoming in short supply, makes it important to understand.

Safety in basements

Stories that begin in a basement never end well. We know it from movies. If Julia Roberts is in a basement, she is in trouble. If the villain is down there,he is up to something illegal, and if James Bond is in a basement, he will probably wake up with dents in his head. There are absolutely, no stories that begin in a basement that ends well.

I have been working with AAB and AlmenNet to design methods for creating safty in basements in public housing.

What I read, see and follow?

@

I follow as many as possible, from very many different fields. I obviously love Maria Viftrup's work, follow @catherine Kleier's online lectures 'An Introduction to Botany', enjoy Stefano Manucso's work The International Laboratory for Plant Neurobiology and PNAT in Florence. I follow globalcommonsalliance.org, and read what they come up with regarding protection of what we share. I follow @SuzanneSimard, @PaolaAntonelli, @NeriOxman, @DustAnja, #francishalle. @kewgardens is a favorite source of knowledge.

Must read: State of the World’s Plants and Fungi

Kew Gardens has once more published the State of the World’s Plants and fungi report. Just read it!

And while you are at it just read Flora - Inside the Secret World of Plants from Kew as well.

Great books

When I work with art and plants I listen to audio books. Some to learn more, others to simply enjoy.

Some of my favourites now are The Song of The Dodo by Davis Quammen, Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl and The Story of More; Jane Goodall’s Seeds of Hope and Where the Crawdads sing by Dalia Owens. But do not forget: Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard, Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s to Speak for the Trees, and Overstory by Richard Powers.