The child of a big-game biologist father and a gardener motherâ painter Olivia Petrides began learning about nature at an early age. By the time she was 22, her family had lived in such far-flung locales as Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. Her father researched guides on plant life and taught Petrides to identify trees, observe animal tracks, and match scat to its source.
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Eventually she collaborated with her father on several field guides, including Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Trees, a three-year project that required photographic exactitude. She illustrated 35 types of oak leaves and 27 kinds of willows. “When you grow up in that environment, you don’t know what a sparrow is,” Petrides says, “but you know what a field sparrow is or what a white-crowned sparrow is. You don’t experience generics. Your experience is in very concrete details.”
While on the chain of islands, she met artists, including painters, a glass blower, a sculptor, and a textile artist who also designed postage stamps. She curated an exhibit of work by these artists, and the show later traveled to Seattle’s Nordic Heritage Museum. It comes to Chicago this weekend. “There’s something about going to a country and swallowing up their imagery,” she says. “I like to give something back.”
