(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Grass is something we take for granted.
We walk all over it, lay on it,
and sometimes mow it down.
Most of us don't give it much thought.
Few of us appreciate it the way that Dan Harvey
and Heather Ackroyd do .
- I think we create these pieces partly
because just love actually the magic of seeing them in print
and come to life and grow.
The British artists blur the lines
between science, nature and art
by manipulating the nature processes that fuel life itself
to create their canvases.
- [Dan] You’re actually imbuing it with this energy
and creating with life.
They're almost Day-Glo images when you first see them.
They are very, very beautiful.
(upbeat music)
- If you actually look at what's
happened in the last 25 years,
if you look at what's happened in the last five years,
mega flooding scenarios-
- [Dan] Severe weather events are happening time
and time and time again and increasingly more frequently.
- And the science is very, very clear
and unambiguous about this.
So our work is very much embraced
around processes of change, around nature,
around biodiversity laws, around climate change.
From the very first time that Dan
and I started to work together,
it was within our sight, it's not necessarily
a direct action or activism.
Sometimes pieces are very, very poetic.
(upbeat music)
We maybe only do one,
one or two photosynthesis works a year.
I think what's interesting is is that
we're not working with lawn or with sod
or with turf, we work with the seed.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Dan and Heather germinate
their seeds for about two weeks.
When ready, they're rubbed onto the canvas,
held in place by water paste.
- [Heather] We're not carving or sculpting
in that more traditional sense.
We're growing.
- [Dan] The image sort of develops over the period of weeks.
To grow one of our pieces, we grow the grass vertically,
then we turn the whole of the studio space here
into a dark room and so the only light
that the grass receives as it's growing
is from the projected, negative image.
So where the strongest light hits the grass,
it produces more the chlorophyll, more of the green pigment.
Where there's less light, it's less green.
Where's there's no light, it grows,
but it's intonated and yellow.
So you get the equivalent to a black and white photograph
but in terms of green to yellow.
- [Heather] Portraits we tend to do around
six foot by four foot or maybe seven foot
by five foot in this case.
We can work really, really large scale.
What's great about that is that it's not,
it's not sized in a gratuitous way.
Actually the resolution we get is really,
really extraordinary, it's phenomenal.
If you equate a chlorophyll molecule with a pixel,
then we're getting kind of like many more pixels
per kinda like square foot.
- The detail you can get on the large ones is absolutely fantastic.
- [Heather] It's part of a process of discovery.
As artists you're looking to make discoveries
within the materials and mediums that you work with.
And light,
and seeds,
water,
crystals, all of those are kinda of part
of our palette of materials that we play with.
- [Narrator] If watered regularly
and kept at low light levels,
these grass portraits can last indefinitely.
- [Dan] There's something about seeing the way
that they grow and they sort of materialize
in front of you really and,
you don't really get to see them until the last moment
really when you can put the lights up.
(upbeat music)
- Oh wow.
Grass me up.
(laughter)
- I feel that this piece has got a real strength about it.
I think the person we photograph and their youth
just has this real kinda connection
with the camera and he's somebody who cares
passionately about what he's doing.
It’s like a watercolor, the color grazes through it you know.
That's very, very beautiful.
- I'm still a bit taken aback by how it's grass.
- [Heather] I know, I know.
We're really, really pleased with it.
We're really pleased with the way that it's grown.