The newest arrival to the Haggerty Museum of Art is a series of 30 watercolor works — entitled "The Flowering Amazon" — created by the English botanic artist, Margaret Mee, an exhibit on loan to Marquette from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Mee's beautifully exotic paintings, drawings, and sketches picture Amazonian plants in their natural habitat. Mee viewed her subject matter firsthand, making a total of 15 expeditions to the Amazon, protesting the destruction of the rain forest due to projects such as the Trans-Amazon Highway and hydroelectric implementations, while recording and preserving the endangered flowers and animal life through art.

According to a Haggerty press release, Mee literally lived in her artistic environment, her inspiration to create beautiful works of art despite "sickness, danger, stifling heat, storms, and isolation." Her works reflect that aggressive love of subject matter.

Dr. Curtis Carter, director and chief curator of the museum claims Mee's work is special in its own right.

"Despite the difficult medium of watercolor, Mee's works are high-quality." He also notes that this exhibit does more than display artistic talent, for "it draws upon its subject matter, the Amazon," bringing the viewer's attention to something beyond the canvas, to an endangered ecosystem. The diaries of Margaret Mee and the miscellaneous Brazilian artifacts included in the "The Flowering Amazon" further contextualize the setting in which Mee worked.

"(Mee's works) tell the story of the Indians she lived with and the plant-life she lived amongst," Carter said.

It is this inherent and urgent message of Amazonian preservation within Mee's works that brought them to Marquette in the first place. The Amazon, an unexplored region in itself, can now be seen up close and in explicit detail by anyone.

When asked why the Marquette community should make a point to visit Mee's exhibit, Carter reflected that in today's culture of iPods, cell phones and computers, Mee's paintings of the Amazon pluck us from out of our everyday hassles and instead tuck us into an alternative world, one of diminishing nature and an art devoted to preserving nature's remaining beauties. It is the up-close detail and the tangible color of the sprawling flowers set against that dense, enclosing jungle that gives Mee's work a dangerous attraction.

"The Flowering Amazon" exhibit will remain at the Haggerty Museum of Art until Dec. 4.

This article was published in The Marquette Tribune on September 15, 2005.