My Garden Pets: Emilie Clark at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden 2010
My Garden Pets is the second body of work that departed from Mary Treat's work (see Home Studies in Nature) and the concept of the beneficial insect. It included a mapping of Treat’s correspondence, archival letters and plant samples, as well as works on paper, small sculptures and a sound piece. The work was the culmination of a four month residency at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden in 2009-2010.
Treat was an expert on beneficial insects and the larger relationships between insects and plants, and specific ecosystems in Florida and New Jersey. Treat corresponded extensively with, and provided specimens and research information to Charles Darwin in England and Asa Gray at Harvard. Drawing on new research in the Garden's libraries and at the Gray Herbarium at Harvard, conversations with BBG staff (in particular the horticulturists working with beneficials), and observation in situ over a four-month period, My Garden Pets links Treat’s specific expertise in beneficial insects to the larger institution of the scientific correspondence, exploring the ways in which Treat herself might have performed something like the role of the beneficial insect for her famous male colleagues, Charles Darwin and Asa Gray. These luminaries of science relied on the observations of trustworthy field researchers like Treat who were nonetheless separated by an absolute gender divide, which determined entrance into professional scientific culture.
Treat was an expert on beneficial insects and the larger relationships between insects and plants, and specific ecosystems in Florida and New Jersey. Treat corresponded extensively with, and provided specimens and research information to Charles Darwin in England and Asa Gray at Harvard. Drawing on new research in the Garden's libraries and at the Gray Herbarium at Harvard, conversations with BBG staff (in particular the horticulturists working with beneficials), and observation in situ over a four-month period, My Garden Pets links Treat’s specific expertise in beneficial insects to the larger institution of the scientific correspondence, exploring the ways in which Treat herself might have performed something like the role of the beneficial insect for her famous male colleagues, Charles Darwin and Asa Gray. These luminaries of science relied on the observations of trustworthy field researchers like Treat who were nonetheless separated by an absolute gender divide, which determined entrance into professional scientific culture.