Poems and Visual Arts of the Plant Companion Field Guide

About the event

Poems and Visual Arts of the Plant Companion Field Guide
Thursday, April 23, 4:00-5:00 pm
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU 

This event celebrates the work of several artists who played a role in creating Plant Companion Field Guide: A New(Old) Way to Know the Plants of the Palouse. In this durable book, Linda Russo’s poems and essayettes for five Indigenous Palouse Prairie plants are presented alongside botanical portraits by Cori Dantini. Emphasizing companionship between humans and plants throughout time and place, Plant Companion asks: How can getting to know plants take part in transforming relationships to the land we inhabit, the traditional homelands of the Nimíipuu and Pelúuc, and to each other? Can we together remember and image future lineages of earth-honoring practices of interspecies kinship, reciprocity, and care?

The event will feature a short poetry reading, Shalla Newman’s printed broadsides framed by David Herbold, and a preview of copies of Plant Companion Field Guide, designed by Krista Brand. Free and open to the public.

Plant Companion Field Guide is funded by the 2025–26 David G. Pollart Center for Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship.

Location and Parking

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU is located in the Crimson Cube (on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB) on the WSU Pullman campus. Hourly parking is available in the Smith Center Garage off Stadium Way and most Green lots on campus are free after 5pm and on weekends. For more information please see the museum’s Visit page.