“The Odyssey of Seeds” by Crushiform, a scientific and wonderful journey to Saint-Jean-du-Gard

For several years, the Nîmes s'illustre festival has allowed people to discover the art of illustration in a different way, with a wandering mix of freshness and high standards. She exports this unique look to Maison Rouge, the museum of the Cévenole Valleys of Saint-Jean-du-Gard where Marie-Laure Cruschi, aka Crushiform presents the exciting project The Seed Odysseywhich is available in a beautiful book at Gallimard and in an exhibition after a residency on site.

In this museum which offers a panoptic vision of the Cévennes, interested in both men and landscapes, history, popular traditions and economic activities, Crushiform further broadens the point of view and builds bridges to the rest of the world. Between naturalistic wandering and poetic reverie, the illustrator mixes scientific knowledge and the marvelous, research and aesthetics. For four years, she studied, observed, admired, drew to capture with pure lines the design of seeds, the inventions of nature to enable the travel, hatching and development of plants.

An exhibition like a stroll

With a very light hanging that invites you to take a stroll, Crushiform suspends the boards in space, evoking both the herbariums of the Enlightenment and the precision of today's images. Thanks to a subtle work on white and volumes, she gives life to wonderful and very real shapes. She accompanies her images with small texts, literary insights into the strength and beauty of nature. During her residency there, she completed her work started in Paris with local varieties.

“For hundreds of millions of years, plants have implemented clever stratagems to allow their offspring to emancipate themselves and disperse”writes the artist in the preface to his book. It is from this reflection that she built her work, cataloging the different ways seeds use to perpetuate themselves. And that’s good, these tools are often very graphic and the words of science can sometimes take on an unsuspected poetic height!

Wind, water or fire

Some seeds disperse with a simple breath, traveling carried by the wind thanks to their plumes, their parachutes, their fins, their capes or their lovelets. A single wilted poppy flower can thrive with 6,000 dedicated little soldiers. Others float on the water, carried by storms, rivers or oceans. Every fire, every flame, seeds need heat to fly away fiercely in explosions. But some manage to backfire naturally, by simply touching them.

Ants signed a contract with fleshy seeds, delighting in their pulp in exchange for a “ticket to ride”. Birds can also help the seeds escape, but they must be tasty… To be moved by mammals, they must cling, clinging to the fleeces with hooked shapes. Some seeds don't like adventure, preferring a sedentary lifestyle. They fall with all their weight but keep a large reserve of energy while waiting for germination. And then of course, man, through space and time, evolved with seeds, cultivating spices and cereals, domesticating nature to create foods, objects, fragrances or potions…

Amazing stories from life

The stories from this odyssey never cease to amaze. Magnolias already existed during the time of dinosaurs. The heart of the sea can travel 20,000 kilometers. Castor oil is 12,000 times more toxic than rattlesnake venom. The donkey gherkin expels its seeds at 36 km/hour and the Seychelles coco-butt is so heavy, that it is threatened.

By focusing its eye on this microcosm, Crushiform captures all the variety of the world, a world which then unfolds with large images inspired by the landscapes of the Cévennes, capturing there also the small streams and the large spaces, the intact beauty of nature and human developments. The odyssey of life…