The Terrarium Project, 2006, video documentation
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (entranceway)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Terrarium collections on storage shelving)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Manchester Letherium context information)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Manchester Letherium context information)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Terrarium collections on Abacus storage system)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Terrarium plants)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (equipment from the laboratory of Dr. Fraser and Mr. Leifeld)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Alan Hébert greenhouse)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Palten Picnic photograph didactic)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Palten Picnic photograph didactic)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (vine wall graphic)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Mary Manis’ Topcon Projection Lensmeter)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Mary Manis’ eyewear collection)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Mary Manis’ study)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Mary Manis’ squirrel sculpture)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Mary Manis’ study desk)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Mary Manis’ hydrology model projection)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Context of hydrology model projection)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Chatham Wertner components)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Charlotte Ross’ desk)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Charlotte Ross’ desk)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (letters between Charlotte Ross and Mary Manis)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Dr. Fraser and Mr. Lieifeld story)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Dr. Fraser and Mr. Leifeld model)
The Terrarium Project, 2006, detail (Dr. Fraser and Mr. Leifeld model)
The Terrarium Project, 2006
Collaborative Exhibition
mixed media installation
Collaboration with Crystal Mowry as Liminal Solutions, including contributions from Denton Fredrickson, Andrew T. Hunter, Rebecca Duclos and David K. Ross, Gail Singer and Eric Roesler
This exhibition featured several unusual terrariums presented as living artifacts collected by a fictitious scientist (Mary Manis) which had been donated to a fictitious institution (The Manchester Letherium). Contents and stories were created for each terrarium in collaboration with a group of writers, artists and horticulturists. The project meshed the aesthetics of factual authority, found in museums and institutions, with that of the wonder-filled worlds created by storytellers who regularly trade fidelity for an enhanced presentation.
Through the use of wall texts and audio narrative (as provided by Mary Manis’s whispered voice), visitors were led through the exhibition and its contents. A photograph of people at a 1919 picnic, found among Manis’s donated items, acted as a connecting point for the curious characters in the exhibition, whose “archives” formed the basis of the Manis collection, including a child with degenerative blindness and an obsession with collecting glass objects; a herbalist involved in experiments with a psychotropic plant collection; and a pair of scientists who experimented with the relationship between sound and plant growth, leading to an outbreak of moss in their laboratory.