Physic Garden was commissioned by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA as a site specific installation in the lobby of the museum to engage a contemporary audience through historic collections.

Physic Garden creates a painterly take on a set of botanically themed 18th century Chelsea Porcelain Factory plates from the museum's Frances and Emory Cocke English Porcelain Collection. The historic plates depict realistic flora and fauna from London's Chelsea Physic Garden.

The monumental scale of Physic Garden showcases the notion that even the simplest materials can be transformed, challenging the collective idea of what plates on the wall can signify today.

As written by curator Sarah Schleuning

“The use of a common form—the plate—as a canvas to explore and explode a pattern is the dynamic hallmark of contemporary American artist Molly Hatch. This novel artistic approach is well evidenced in Physic Garden (2014), Hatch’s largest commission to date (and first for a museum). In theory, Physic Garden is functional—after all, the plates are dishwasher safe. However, by massing hundreds of plates on a wall, the result far surpasses the practical. Everyday objects together become a surface decoration that overpowers the space, while transforming a modest form, ordinary in material and theme, into the dominator. The work has quickly become one of the iconic pieces at the High Museum of Art, visible to all visitors as they enter the museum. In all, 456 plates—convex, gleaming discs of color—spanning 20 x 17 feet, create a pixilated pattern; at a distance, it comes into focus as a whole work, while up close, it reveals the intricacies of the painterly surfaces full of flora and fauna.”

For full essay, click to read Molly Hatch’s Catalog of work

Materials: 456 hand-painted earthenware plates with underglaze and glaze

Dimensions: 240h x 190w x 1.5d inches (20h x 16w feet)