Casting Flowers

Artist Rachel Dein introduces readers for the first time to botanical bas-relief, an innovative and exciting technique developed by the author, one that anyone—gardener, parent, weekend crafter, or artist—can try at home in every season.

Casting the Garden introduces botanical bas-relief as a rewarding and simple method that encourages even the most basic beginners to revel in the ability to record a plant's texture, pattern, and delicacy in fine detail, creating compositions as small as a single stem or as complex as a field of wildflowers, leaves, and grasses. Making a botanical cast is simple: the maker rolls out a slab of clay, and then flowers and foliage are arranged and pressed onto it. Once the plants are removed, a wooden frame is placed firmly on the clay and plaster is poured in and allowed to set. Once the plaster is dry, the clay is then peeled away, and the plaster cast is pushed out of its frame, revealing a cast of the plants in all their glory. Artists can leave a finished piece bare and elegant, or experiment with painting on its surface, bringing the plants to life in color.

From small plaster tiles featuring a single flower portrait to large panels that suggest an entire garden full of blooms, botanical castings reflect every gardener and artist's desire to capture the ephemeral in nature. A meditative activity that encourages artists to explore their gardens and natural spaces for materials, botanical bas-relief teaches readers how to track the progress of the seasons, immortalizing the plants at the moment when they are most alive. Like a fossil of long forgotten flowers, each finished cast is a vestige of time and an act of remembering: a summer day in the garden, a perfect magnolia at its peak, a wedding bouquet to last forever, or a memory of the first daffodils in spring.

With accessible instructions, stunning photography of the process from start to finish, and insights into the artist's own garden where she forages for inspiration, readers will discover:

• Step-by-step guidance on the tools and equipment needed to set up a simple workspace
• What plants work best in botanical casts, and which to avoid
• How to arrange flowers and stems to make well balanced artistic compositions
• Tips on creating unique pieces of artwork as mementos of a season or records of special occasions