As she wound through the smoky streets of Santa Barbara while the Thomas fire loomed beyond the horizon, Michelle Castle pondered history and art.
“I’ve always been inspired by the old historical etchings in general,” Castle said. “Whether it’s plants or animals, I love things that deal with actual history and facts. I love when you can learn something and it’s also beautiful.”
The artist and Los Olivos shopkeeper is featured in a new exhibit, titled Botanicals, showing at the Los Olivos Wine Merchant Cafe through Jan. 4. Her work, a series of watercolor painted prints of antique etchings, features colorful flowers meticulously labeled and printed on 100 percent cotton rag paper. It’s an homage to a near-dead scientific method that has found new life as a popular art form.
Castle explained that for hundreds of years (and up until recently), much of plant and animal life in nature was recorded through intricate drawings. Etchings weren’t done with the purpose of creating art, but rather to document scientific aspects of the life, including the Latin names of certain species.
But as history progressed and etchings fell out of favor to things like cameras or videos, the medium saw a rebirth in the eyes of collectors and art lovers. The originals posses a meticulous, haunting beauty about them, one that speaks to an era frozen in the slow, practiced patience of a scientific hand. Castle’s prints speak to the beauty and simplicity of the once invaluable scientific tool.
“Up until pretty recently, everything was documented by drawing it,” she said. “It wasn’t intended to be art, it was informational. I was always fascinated by those etchings.”
Castle, who has a degree in design from the UCLA, came across a series of black and white etchings from the 1600s that she became fascinated with and decided to incorporate them into some kind of art project. The self-taught watercolorist began to transform them with paints.
“I wanted to put my own life into them,” she said. “To make them more artistic but with a historical context.”
To keep with the historical theme, Castle included the original Latin names of each flower as well as paintings of insects circling them. In order to produce each piece, she first scanned in the original and made a print.
“Then I watercolor them,” she said. “Then I bring in the names and the insects through as a collage in Photoshop, digitally, and create my own piece.”
Castle said she chose watercolors for the project because it allows her to build layers.
Additionally, Castle said one of the other aspects of her prints that stand out is in how differently she approaches the paints.
“Since I haven’t taken an official lesson, I’m not comfortable using [watercolors] loosely,” she said. “With a lot of other people, it’s very loose and almost watery. With mine, it’s more malleable and translucent.”
With approximately 15 pieces on display now at the Los Olivos Wine Merchant Cafe, interested art lovers can check out for themselves just what the end result of Castle’s process is. Prints are also available for sale online via the website for Castle’s popular Los Olivos store, Honey Paper.
As Castle sat in her car, on the side of the road in the beachside town for her interview with the Sun, she reflected for a moment on a question she is asked about the emergence of digital media and the subtle fading of the art of print, illustration, and design.
“I’m a big tech person, and I love that we can look up anything,” she said. “It’s about experiencing it and recognizing it and bringing it back to life again.”
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose was etched in the 1600s, too. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 14-21, 2017.
