I love the city. I love nature. And I love when the two intersect. There is a tiny forest on the UofT campus where Beech trees and Sugar Maples grow. In the summer months, native wildflowers spring from the ground. It’s an urban treasure, and so well hidden amidst the concrete and brick that most of us don’t even know it’s there. London based ceramicist, Katie Spragg avidly seeks out nature in the city streets where she resides. “There is something magical about seeing dandelions appear on the roadside, or a length of bindweed crawling up the edge of a parking lot.” she says. Somehow, it’s almost more poignant than bluebonnets growing in a field. City wildflowers are resilient and adaptable, and Spragg’s exquisite porcelain flowers are emblematic of that. Watch Spragg making a flower; it’s quite mesmerizing, as are her animations. The Bloom series –– tiny, delicate flowers and grasses peeping through slabs of concrete –– is quite moving.

As a tribute to hospital workers and the humble heroes that they are, New York-based artist, Aliza Nisenbaum set about painting a series of portraits of NHS workers for a solo show at the Liverpool Tate. The sittings were done in the summer by Zoom. There is a chaplain, a hospital porter, and a respiratory doctor who came home to his pregnant wife, and then new born baby, after every shift. “Ryan wanted to be painted with his child in their allotment garden,” recalls Nisenbaum. Sharing these people’s stories was central to the project. “In some ways my paintings are about the individuals and their faces, but the formal elements of the work are kind of a fleshing out of their stories.” Ann Taylor says she always wanted to be a nurse. “I don’t care who you are, whether you’re the prime minister or somebody that lives on the streets, from me you’ll get exactly the same level of care.” Portraits are historically associated with Kings, Queens and dignitaries. “Portraits are for those with status and stature,” says consulting physician, Lalith Wijedoru. “But this is something very different. We are being immortalized in a form art. We are being exposed to the public in a way that perhaps the public are not used to.” It was a gratifying project for Nisenbaum and uplifting for the health workers. “To be a painting on a wall is longevity,” says Taylor. To bring colour, personality, emotion and struggle to groups of people that may otherwise go unrecognized is at the heart of Nisenbaum’s work. “When I paint these small passages of people’s skin it’s kind of a reflective space where I have the memory of the conversation we had. I think about what they’re going through, how they must be on the front lines and how they must be quite afraid. A lot of them are facing patients with Covid in their daily lives. I am thinking about them, and how they must need a renewal.”

I am a magpie for anything that shimmers and sparkles. El Anatsui‘s large scale wallhangings –– made from thousands of flattened bottles tops woven together with copper wire –– caught my eye immediately. His work combines hints of Ghanaian kente cloth, mosaics, tapestries and paintings by Klimt. Transformation, mass consumption and the environment are all central ideas in his work. At a glance, they look like a painting. I enjoy that surprise, when something looks like one thing from a far, and up close is something quite different. As with most things, Anatsui’s work is so much more intricate and complicated up close. The pieces also transform depending on how they’re displayed. I read on the Tate’s website (the Tate has an Anastui in its permanent collection) that Anatsui’s work arrives at institutions without instructions because he believes that galleries should be part of the creative process. “I don’t believe in artworks being things that are fixed,” says Anatsui. In a short film for Art Basel, Anatsui encourages young artists to play, and to be daring. “The golden rule is, there are no rules. As an artist your worth is determined by how you can operate without rules.”

Land from above looks like an enormous tapestry or an intricate slab of onyx or marble. This aerial view of chili crops in the Umerkot District of Pakistan’s Sindh province looks like terrazzo. Georg Gerster was one of our best known air photographers, and so many of his images of lakes, quarries and lentil fields from above make me think of textiles. I imagine the world swathed in fabric. This photograph looks just like a piece of handwoven Kuba cloth. Perspective; it’s transformative. “Height provides an overview, and an overview facilitates incite, while incite generates consideration –– perhaps.”

I am drawn to the rich texture in McKenzie Dove‘s paintings, and to the beautiful simplicity of her geometric plaster sculptures. Her scratches and scribbles are reminiscent of Twombly. Her thick, sweeps of paint are applied with a knife. Dove grew up in a small town in Texas. The population was 2,500. “I would literally ride my horse into town, buy supplies, and go sketch till sunset,” she says. Years later, she now lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama in a gorgeous Tudor style white-washed studio with soaring ceilings and heaps of natural sunlight. I love the texture of this white canvas, and the quiet boldness of these black on black shapes. Dove is young, and already very collectible.