The Wicklow artist behind the incredible botanical installation in Jo Malone’s flagship Parisian store
Based in a studio down in Co Wicklow—a.k.a. The Garden County—Erica Devine’s work is immersed in nature. Not long back from a trip to France, the self-taught Irish artist was over to work on an intricate installation for Jo Malone’s flagship Parisian store. Capturing 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, Devine finishes her pieces off by pouring liquid plaster into the impression, which then sets as a perfect mould, reflecting the most infinitesimal details. “The project was technically ambitious,” she tells me, adding, “it really pushed the boundaries of the art form.”
I specialise in botanical casting, an art form that involves pressing plants into clay and creating a plaster cast of the resulting impression.
This technique captures the intricate details of the plants, translating their ephemeral beauty into low-relief artworks. I was originally a museum conservator, having worked at the National Museum of Ireland, the National Trust in the UK and for various award-winning historic houses and museums in Ireland. However, I always wanted to do something creative and I’ve always loved plants and flowers. My mother tells me that when I was a toddler she brought me into a shoe shop as she needed new shoes. When she left she looked down and saw that I too had new shoes. I had helped myself to new sandals with big yellow sunflowers stuck to the front. I was quickly marched back in! Conservation is a creative science, but it requires you to be invisible, whereas I wanted to make my mark.
I set up my studio, Studio Scim, in a converted 18th century grain store in the Wicklow countryside where I also grow plants for use in my work.
I create stand-alone artworks that seek to capture the beauty of the natural world. Innovation is at the heart of my practice so I have also developed a line of products that include candles, window and furniture panels, soap and edibles such as chocolate and fondant. I am currently partnering with a soap maker and an internationally renowned patisserie artist to bring these products into the mainstream. That has been hugely rewarding professionally. I also enjoy sharing my work through teaching. I find it is always a two-way street in terms of learning and, equally importantly, it’s great fun. Being an artist can be a lonely furrow to plough so having students who come and go has been a very enjoyable experience.
I was commissioned to make a floor-to-ceiling botanical feature wall and fireplace surround for Jo Malone of London’s flagship store in the fashionable Le Marais district of Paris.
It was such an exciting commission from both a technical and artistic point of view as it pushed the boundaries of what was possible in the art form. I took a leap of faith and thankfully, so did the Jo Malone design team. We used plants from their iconic perfume range to create the pieces, some of which I grew myself and others that were cut for me from the extensive herbaceous borders of Killruddery House, which is close to my studio. Landing such a commission was quite an amazing experience. They saw my work on the internet, asked for samples and loved it. It was hugely affirmative for me as an artist as I am entirely self-taught.
I would like to work with other interior designers and architects to execute large scale pieces such as external botanical door surrounds, recessed friezes in entrance vestibules or wrap-around botanical shower walls.
When you work with teams that have a great depth of experience and professionalism, projects that would otherwise seem like ambitious pipedreams suddenly become reality.
If I have any single mission, I suppose, it is to cure native plant blindness one piece of art at a time and chip away at the mindset that can conceive of any plant being a ‘weed’.
I live and work in Wicklow, the Garden County, so named because simply stepping out into the countryside is like entering the garden of Eden. From the coast, through the wooded valleys and to the mountains, it teems with delicate cow parsley, lush ferns, foxgloves the colour of amethysts and gorse that smells so exotically of coconut, teasel, herb robert, blackberries, bluebells… I could go on and on.
Love your wildflowers and let them prosper!
They’ll reward you with beauty, bounty and all manner of fascinating little creepy crawlies. I remember the great fun we had as children finding ragweed crawling en masse with black and yellow caterpillars and staring at them for what seemed like hours. I’d hate to think of children missing out on that today.
