The project Meadow Alchemy draws together field notes, drawings, photographs, videos and field recordings. The observations made by the scientist and the artists converse with each other, revealing both similarities and differences between their practices. In the collaboration, their diverse perspectives compliment each other to create a nuanced and complex view into the meadows that reflect both local and planetary environmental transformations. The project took place in the Island of Seili, Turku Archipelago, Finland, 2025–2026.
The genus Lady’s mantle (Achemilla) is named after the alchemists. Sparkling dewdrops often collect in the funnel-shaped base of its leaves, which the alchemists gathered for use in their work as the ‘quinta essentia’.
The observations are compiled into a volvelle (time spiral) installation, which will be presented at the Archipelago Research Institute in Seili in collaboration with CAA in 2027. The volvelle will eventually expand also into an online archive. The work includes a book, to be published late 2026. The whole body of work will not only tell about the meadow plants growing in Seili, but also about the formation of these meadow ecosystems. Starting from the annual cycles of plants, Meadow Alchemy guides the viewers on a journey through time, all the way to the birth of the Earth.
This series of four round drawings presents observations made in meadows in visual form, in the same way that alchemists expressed the results of their research in their own alchemical visual representations.
The alchemical book Mutus Liber (The Silent Book, 1702) contains very little text. The entire alchemical process is illustrated. In the first illustration, the alchemists have gone out to a meadow to collect the morning dew, which is the main raw material for their work. The book’s few words appear in the 14th illustration at the end of the book: Ora. Lege, lege, lege. Relege. Labora et invenies (Pray. Read, read, read. Read again. Work hard and you will find what you seek.) I asked the conservation biologist responsible for the meadows in Seili for guidance for anyone wishing to establish or cultivate their own meadow. The instructions were as follows:
Choose a dry and open location.
Use domestic seeds.
Mow, mow, mow, and mow.
Do not leave cut grass on the meadow.
Biologists carry out species surveys of the monitoring plot by dividing the 10 x 10-metre plot into a hundred 1-metre-by-1-metre squares. The squares are marked with wooden sticks, one end of which is painted in a high-visibility colour so that it stands out more clearly against the terrain. Traditionally, the artist has approached the meadow with a different kind of stick in their hand: a charcoal or pencil, with which they draw a picture of the meadow as they see it. The work Stick Pencils combines both approaches. The wooden stick used as a landmark has been turned into a pencil.
You can view the illustrations from the book Meadow Alchemy in the herbarium. The photo album contains pictures of the meadow plants from the monitoring plots taken at various observation dates. You can also follow the progress of Kalle Hamm’s contribution to the project in the work diary.
