Smithsonian orchid show to feature Baltimore artist Phaan Howng

Growing up, mostly in South Florida, Phaan Howng tended to a personal collection of orchids with the curiosity of someone who might spy one of the plants at Home Depot and decide to take it home on a whim.

Today, like a pollinator drawn to a flower in bloom, she’s attracted to the “gossipy side” of orchids — who creates the hybrids, which varieties are named for U.S. first ladies, and what compels people to poach rare specimens from the wild.

“There’s so many crazy stories,” said Howng, a Baltimore artist with a master’s degree in fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art.  “They’re like the most interesting … flower in the entire universe.”

So intriguing that Smithsonian Gardens and the United States Botanic Garden team up each year to showcase the buzz-worthy plant.

For their 28th annual orchid exhibit starting Saturday in Washington, D.C., “The Future of Orchids: Conservation and Collaboration,” Howng’s psychedelic works — including 3D-printed blooms — will join the garden spectacle.

“It’s the magic of orchids and the magic of horticulture, getting to work with someone that sees the orchid collection … in a different light,” said Justin Kondrat, the Smithsonian Gardens Orchid Collection’s lead horticulturist, of partnering with Howng for artwork commissioned by Smithsonian Gardens.

With an emphasis on current threats to orchids and their habitats, the exhibit promises to inspire an interest in conservation.

“When you look at an orchid, it gives off a personality,” said Kondrat, who uses he/they pronouns.

Known for having the same kind of bilateral symmetry as human faces, “I like to think that people see themselves in orchids,” they added. “If you see yourself, and you know more about the orchid, you’re more likely to protect it for future generations.”

About a year ago, Kondrat said he took Howng for a tour of the Smithsonian Gardens Orchid Collection, containing over 5,000 specimens; Howng recalled being “mind blown” by what she learned about the plants during their conversations.

In the fall, she got to work in her Station North studio translating her newfound knowledge into large designs to wrap around trees; papier-mâché orchid pots resembling rocks and logs; and larger-than-life 3D-printed flowers.

The pots are meant to look like “different types of surfaces that orchids grow on,” said Howng, 41, whose artwork typically investigates nature and “an optimistic post-apocalypse.”

“Showing like, these orchids are epiphytic, meaning they grow in trees, or this is a lithophytic orchid, those grow on rocks, which I had no idea,” she marveled.

“We just see [orchids] at Trader Joe’s.”

Some of her whimsical trees stand around 6 feet tall and the “goopy bits” call to mind fungus, said Howng.

All of the pieces were created for the exhibit, Howng said, except for a series of mountainscapes that were part of her 2020-2021 Towson University exhibit “A Bag of Rocks for a Bag of Rice.” Her work has also previously been shown in museums including the Baltimore Museum of Art.

In her most recent undertaking, as in those that came before it, research is “really what drives the work,” Howng said. “Learning from history is important.”

Howng listened in the spring to an audio version of “The Scent of Scandal,” a book about high-stakes orchid pursuits. In preparation for the exhibit, Kondrat said they connected Howng with scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, to discuss research relating to conservation, orchid extinction and pollination, among other topics.

The collaborative effort is perhaps most immediately tangible in Howng’s oversized orchid flowers, created using 3D scans produced by Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office, which Kondrat said took “small images” of several orchids in “peak bloom.”

“Most orchid flowers are ephemeral,” he said. “What better way to capture that image, but in 3D.”

Howng outsourced the printing of the orchid flowers, which were a ghostly white before she painted them, drawing inspiration for the pieces from botanical models dating as far back as the late 1800’s.

“I didn’t want to just have a 3D print … and just paint over it,” Howng said. “I just want them to have more sculptural features, and then tie it back also to the hand — the importance of the hand being a part of the work.”

The digital models used to create the pieces will be viewable online during the exhibit and likely beyond, Kondrat said.

Over a thousand orchids will make their way into “The Future of Orchids” as they’re swapped in and out during the months-long show, estimated Kondrat and Susan Pell, the U.S. Botanic Garden’s executive director.

Most will come from Smithsonian Gardens and the U.S. Botanic Garden — which has a collection of around 3,000 specimens — though some display orchids are also usually purchased and added to the mix, Pell said.

“We really want to keep it super fresh,” she said. “We want to make sure that whatever is on display is in peak bloom.”

The Smithsonian Gardens Orchid Collection is housed in Suitland, Maryland, where each plant is meticulously protected from pathogens and pests, and groomed before being brought to D.C., Kondrat said, describing the care setting as hospital-like.

There exist some 30,000 orchid species in the wild, Pell said, with roots even in unexpected places — like Alaska. Some orchids are “stinky”; others use scent to trick pollinators into perceiving them as female members of their species.

They can be small enough to fit in a person’s palm, or tall enough to tower over them, Kondrat said. And the American Orchid Society says that some orchids are “virtually immortal.”

“Orchids are very desirable and they’re very collectible and people get obsessed with them,” Kondrat said.

The fascination is evident on social media, where orchid influencers have cropped up. It might stem, in part, from how particular the plants are known to be.

“People like things that are a little bit hard to grow and a little bit strange and a little bit rare,” Pell said. “It’s a little bit of a challenging houseplant to have.”

Addressing what he hopes people will take away from the upcoming exhibit, Kondrat spoke about the “need to protect these botanical gems.”

Poaching is “one of the biggest threats to orchids globally,” Pell said, noting that the U.S. Botanic Garden serves as a “plant rescue center,” receiving illegally collected or imported plants.

Topics including poaching and what Howng called the “black market trade” of orchids are ones the artist was eager to explore.

“It is so important for us to do conservation and have more of a symbiotic relationship with plants, versus just treating them as objects,” Howng said. “I have this big idea of creating a plant renaissance.”

In her studio, Howng had only one potted orchid, for “research,” she said. At home, she admitted to having none.

“They take a lot of work,” she said, almost as if gossiping about orchids behind their backs.