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Arts Home PageTOBY TYLER’S WILDFLOWER COLLECTION
The history of this collection is a long story but its creation, as things
worked out, was probably inevitable. Back when I was ten years old, I spent a
glorious summer with my paternal grandmother at her cabin in the Rockies above
Denver. It was from her during that exciting and pivotal several weeks that I
began my life-long interest in flowers and Botany. However it would not be for
many years –during which I grew up and went through the school system in
Sacramento, California; spent summers camping and hiking in the high Sierra with
family and friends; and attended California Collage of Arts and Crafts and other
colleges- that circumstances would conspire to start me on this project . . .
By 1954, I found myself up here in Alaska where I discovered a promising new
canvas for this growing interest. The summer of 1959 I was sent out to a
fish-counting site on the Alagnak River. Knowing it would be fairly isolated, I
bought a new camera intending to photograph the plants as each bloomed. As many
of you already know, early on I managed to drop that camera into the water so
that it had to be sent out to be fixed. Fortunately, however, I had also brought
along watercolors, brushes and paper hoping to capture some of the scenery also.
With all that time on my hands, I set out to record these same flowers on paper
as each bloomed before my delighted eyes. Once started there was no stopping
until I had captured them all (which, of course, I never have!) Over the next
several years my regular work allowed me freedom over those wonderful, long
summer days to drive the limited road system in my little tan Hillman Husky
seeking new and different wild plants to paint!
This carefree life ended in 1960 as I opened my first small Art Studio here on
Pioneer Avenue next to Alaska Wild Berry Products in June 1961. There were
always new local plants to be added as I found them. By the winter of 1963 I was
already working on my large Berry Chart followed shortly by the matching Flower
Chart. During these early years I also brought out the first of my flower
note-cards which began as a set of only six which were printed by an
acquaintance using a new way of printing which he had invented. Now, of course,
there are a dozen different cards in each set showing twice as many flowers.
When my second shop closed in 1991, this collection had grown too large to be
logically out on display as it had been for the past thirty years. There had
been many times when I had rearranged pages and consolidated those with lots of
empty space with other smaller plants of the same family. There were several
times when I even tried to get the collection printed as a book or manuscript;
but it never quite happened. More recently the collection had gotten more and
more mixed up until this year I finally decided that it needed to be organized
into a form that would be more useful into the future . . .