Painting + Printmaking alumna Alice Tangerini (BFA ’72) is the first and only botanical illustrator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where she illuminates the biology of plant life through detailed artwork. She has contributed over 1,000 scientific illustrations to various institutions over the span of her 46-year-long career.
“I’d always been interested in drawing, even from childhood,” recalls Tangerini. “I grew up in a neighborhood where even the neighbors knew I was the ‘girl who liked to draw.’” One summer in between college semesters at her junior college in Kensington, Maryland, Tangerini was looking for a summer job. It was one of these neighbors who suggested that Tangerini talk to Lyman Smith, a botanist at the Smithsonian’s National Herbarium who happened to live in the neighborhood and to be looking to hire an illustrator.
When she went to introduce herself to Smith for the first time, she brought along a high school art portfolio of horse and dog drawings. The closest thing to a plant that Tangerini had drawn up to that point was the grass under the horses’ hooves. “He raised his eyebrows and said ‘I’ll just give you a try,’” she recalls now. “And that was exactly how it started.”
Read the full article on smithsonian.com.
Image: Using an artist’s tools and the skills of a scientist, Tangerini makes “art in the service of science.” (Botanical illustrations by Alice Tangerini; photograph by Jennifer J. Hill. Photo illustration by Heather Palmateer.)
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