Blueprints In Bloom

dish_Macoto-Murayama-Lathyrus-odoratus-side-view

Japanese artist Macoto Murayama creates diagrams of flowers for his series “Inorganic flora”:

He buys his specimens… from flower stands or collects them from the roadside. Murayama carefully dissects each flower, removing its petals, anther, stigma and ovaries with a scalpel. He studies the separate parts of the flower under a magnifying glass and then sketches and photographs them.

Using 3D computer graphics software, the artist then creates models of the full blossom as well as of the stigma, sepals and other parts of the bloom. He cleans up his composition in Photoshop and adds measurements and annotations in Illustrator, so that in the end, he has created nothing short of a botanical blueprint. …

Murayama chose flowers as his subject because they have interesting shapes and, unlike traditional architectural structures, they are organic. But, as he has said in an interview, “When I looked closer into a plant that I thought was organic, I found in its form and inner structure hidden mechanical and inorganic elements.” After dissecting it, he added, “My perception of a flower was completely changed.”

Gallery here.

(Image: A side view of Lathyrus odoratus L. 2009-2012, by Macoto Murayama. Courtesy of Frantic Gallery.)