"Re-Rooted" Featuring Works by Ellen Driscoll from April 20 through May 27

Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 2024 Art/Garden series continues with “Re-Rooted,” an exhibition featuring the drawings of Brooklyn-based artist Ellen Driscoll, who takes her inspiration from the resilience and regenerative power of plants.

The exhibition runs from April 20 through May 27, in the Leonhardt Galleries. The public is invited to the opening reception on Saturday, April 20, from 5 to 7 p.m.

“Plants have been on the Earth much longer than human beings — adapting through eons of environmental change,” said Driscoll. “As our environmental crisis becomes ever more urgent, my art takes its inspiration from the quiet work plants do to survive, adapt and heal our planet. These drawings reflect on the process by which plants use their root system to clean up toxic contaminants in soil, air and water.

“My hope,” continued Driscoll, “is that these drawings inspire the viewer to reflect on the wonderous botanical alchemy that exists around us and to take hope that we humans can also adapt and reroute the destructive environmental path we are on.”

Driscoll’s work is in major collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art.  

Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bunting Institute, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, the LEF Foundation, the Rhode Island Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, and a Fine Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Leonhardt Galleries are open seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The address: 5 West Stockbridge Road, Stockbridge, Mass.