Irina Neacșu

Irina Neacșu focuses on endemic wild flora and is interested in research projects that raise awareness of natural habitats. During her residency at Denver Botanic Gardens, she created a body of botanical illustrations exploring her fascination with endemic flora, inspiring appreciation for the wild plant life surrounding us. 

About the Artist 

Irina Neacșu is a graduate from Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, Romania, and a postgraduate from the Rome University of Fine Arts. She runs a private art school in Transylvania, Romania. She was awarded an art residency at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and has exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society Botanical Art and Photography Show in London. Her focus is on endemic wild flora and she is particularly interested in research projects that raise awareness of natural habitats. 

Jessi Harvey

Jessi Harvey inspires curiosity about nature through music incorporating humor, surprise and variation. The curiosity and joy expressed through their music offers listeners the opportunity to listen closely to the natural world around them. Their time at Denver Botanic Gardens was used to create Shades of Colorado, a string quartet that explores the lifecycles of local flora and natural phenomena in Colorado.  

About the Artist 

Jessi Harvey is a Montana-born composer and teacher. Their works are based in nature, social curiosity and humor. Harvey’s work "by the nature of our conversation" won first place at the 2020 Darkwater Womxn in Music Festival. They have worked with several music organizations including, Opera Elect, the Art Song Collaborative Project, and the performance group Strange Interlude. Their work has been featured nationally and they were a selected composer at Unheard-of//Ensemble’s Collaborative Composition Initiative and held a position as a resident artist at the Rensing Center, South Carolina.

Jasmine Holmes

Jasmine Holmes uses depictions of staple food crops from her Creole upbringing to explore connections to her West African ancestry. She considers her work a love letter to her ancestors and their cultivation of the land, depicting and celebrating the knowledge and food traditions that have been passed down within her family for generations. Holmes used her Land Line residency to create paintings that explore the beauty of the botanical world and honor the sustenance it offers.  

About the Artist 

Jasmine Holmes is a mixed media artist living and working in Colorado. Born in Arizona, she received her BFA from the University of West Florida, and her MFA from Colorado State University. She has exhibited with Redline, IRL Art Gallery and has presented as a demonstrating artist at the Denver Art Museum. 

Daniela Maria Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas

Daniela Maria Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas used her residency to explore the human need for nourishment and the connection between the human and natural world. The resulting ceramic works give form to the desire to hold on to what is precious, to keep memories of home alive and to keep loved ones close. Like deep roots gripping the soil below, her work explores how the natural world can reflect the longing we feel when we leave home and the connections we make across distance. 

About the Artist 

Daniela Maria Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas is a Colombian immigrant pursuing her MFA in ceramics at the University of Dallas. She graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA in studio art and a minor in art history and obtained her MA from University of Dallas. She focuses on organic forms through hand-built sculptures and ceramic installations to explore the longing of home. 

T Edward Bak

During his Land Line residency, Bak created a series of illustrated works exploring the history of connections between people and native plants in the San Luis Valley region. His research drew from his own family history in the area, combined with resources offered by Denver Botanic Gardens. His work aims to support and expand awareness of connections between communities and their environments, and to detail the traditional knowledge and use of native plants in medicines and other cultural practices.

About the Artist

T Edward Bak was raised in Colorado and currently lives in Oregon. His approach as a writer and artist is informed by an interest in the environmental history of western North America. As an instructor of nonfiction comics and graphic novels with the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, he draws from the experience of a working cartoonist whose published stories have appeared in Drawn & Quarterly Showcase and The Best American Comics anthologies. 

Amy K. Wendland

Amy K. Wendland uses a combination of humor and unusual materials to tell stories about our relationship with the environment. During her residency at Denver Botanic Gardens, she will work with deaccessioned herbarium sheets, transforming them into modern "herbaria viva"—dried plant specimens augmented with drawing or painting to tell the story of the plant and its landscape. Wendland seeks to fuse creative symbolism with scientific knowledge to explore the varied ways we relate to the natural world. 

About the Artist 

Amy K. Wendland lives and works in Durango, Colorado, where she serves as a professor in the Art & Design Department and as Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences at Fort Lewis College. She received her BFA in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, an MA with a sculpture concentration and an MFA in graphics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has worked commercially as an artist and designer, and her drawings, sculptures and mixed media works have been exhibited nationally and internationally.