Five American Artworks You Should See During Earth Month

Home is a word often tied to a sense of place, perhaps even identity. This April, celebrate our collective home on Earth with artists from the Crystal Bridges collection. Take a closer look at these five artists and their nature-inspired artworks. These pieces not only depict nature in unique ways, but explore how we relate to our environments and make them home.

The renowned American painter and New Mexico desert lover Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 invites you to take a closer look. By increasing the scale of her abstracted paintings, O’Keeffe (1887-1986) painted nature as someone who knew nature well.

Working in her home just outside Santa Fe, O’Keeffe’s landscapes and still lifes revolutionized abstract modern art. She found inspiration in the dry bones and vibrant flowers of the desert, as well as the sweeping mesas and Native and Hispanic cultures of the region.

As O’Keeffe once described, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.”

Like O’Keeffe, modernist painter and poet Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was also captivated by the landscapes of New Mexico. He continued to paint landscapes on the East Coast, studying in Boston and Maine, eventually making his way to Europe, where he drew Post-Impressionist inspiration from the abstract marks of Cezanne’s work. Hartley migrated through many diverse American landscapes, rendering them in soft, serene colors and thick brushstrokes.

The painting’s title, Hall of the Mountain King, is also the title of music composed by Romantic Norwegian pianist Edvard Grieg. The song’s slowly accelerating tune invites a sense of fantasy by describing a troll king living deep within the hills. Listen to Grieg’s piece and think about how Hartley’s imagination might have been sparked. Did he think, like Grieg’s song, that trolls lived in these Maine mountains?

Mary Frank (b. 1933) is a British American visual artist whose work crosses multiple mediums and themes. In River, she explores the relationship between the female form and the title of the work, a gently bending river.

River is carved of walnut wood, further cementing Frank’s theme of Mother Earth. Here, the river is also a woman at rest with arms above her head, reminding us that we are also a part of Earth.

Flora C. Mace (b. 1949), one of the first women to teach at the Pilchuck Glass School, is a glassmaker and educator who creates her “drawings” using glass threads on molten glass. A student of glass sculpture artist Dale Chihuly, Mace is interested in the relationship between humans and nature.

In Big Violet, a real botanical specimen is encased within glass and preserved indefinitely. However, the glass is made of sand, which comes partly from ancient, fossilized creatures. By entangling these organic materials, Mace hints at the inescapable connections between human control over nature and the human need for nature.

Ryan RedCorn (b. 1979, Osage Nation) photographed his father, Raymond RedCorn, in a field of rare ancestral Osage red corn. This field, glowing in the morning sun, stands taller than Raymond but was cultivated by his father before he was born.

Ryan and Raymond’s family descends from the Osage Tsi.zho Wah.shta.ke clan, Gentle Eagle Clan, whose traditional role was to plant this corn and other vegetables for their people. RedCorn captures this generation of his family and his family’s corn, showing the nurturing relationship between them and the ancestral significance of red corn, which extends beyond the food benefits of the crop.

“Corn is shared with their Osage community to be cooked for feasts and funerals. Prayers are said during and after it is cooked, providing healing for all who eat Osage red corn.”

—  Welana A. Queton (Wahzhazhe, Mvskoke, Tsalagi) in dialogue with the artist Ryan RedCorn and subject Raymond RedCorn.

How do you think about the landscape around you? Whether you suspect lurking trolls, marvel in the details of flowers, or draw on the land for food and community, Earth is a beautiful place to call home. Celebrate it this month with Crystal Bridges by visiting to see these artworks in person, or by hiking our many trails and grounds!