Crazy Plant Lady

Crazy Plant Lady
By Paige Rohrbach

On December 2nd, 2016, I ventured down to Saranac Art with my friend Bailee, to look at the different art. We were able to look at a lot of different things, including Ellen Picken's piece, Crazy Plant Lady.

When I first walked into this room full of plants I was confused and had no idea what to think. I didn't understand the artistic point of view. I walked all the way around the exhibit and saw numbers and didn't know why. Were they her favorites to least favorites? Were the numbers to keep track of which one was which? To clarify these questions I asked her, "Why plants?" and she explained everything with great detail.

The first response was that each plant represented one Facebook friend that Ellen has. She wanted to see if she could love and nurture these plants like she would want to with friendships. She started this project about 3-4 months ago in her house and has kept them alive since then.


I asked her if she assigned names to every plant for every friend's name. She has 686 Facebook friends and therefore has 686 plants in that room. That would be a lot of plants to assign every name to; however, she did show us this little guy to the right and said she named him Jeff. When she said this to us, I felt as though that was the best name possible to give a floating, green, ball like, plant! Jeff is a very unique little plant.


Ellen also had a few statistics about "friends on Facebook" vs. "real close friends" that people may have. These facts really stood out to me because I was able to relate to them. I would put myself into the 39% range of having between 3 and 5 close friends.

I also was curious about my own self and the amount of Facebook friends I have... 928. That is way too many! I can't even think of 928 people that I know. Heck I cannot think of 300 people that I know. The amount of friends I have on Facebook vs. the amount is real life are very different numbers.

At first this project of Ellen's made very little sense, but once I was able to talk to her about it more and learn what the meaning behind it all was, I was intrigued. The thought of cherishing this many plants is pretty difficult by itself, exchanging that for humans makes it even more intimidating. Ellen's "Crazy Plant Lady" exhibit has challenged me to both clean out my Facebook and the amount of "friends" that I have, and to cherish and nurture the close friendships I have and want to continue having. Ok, and to go out to buy a plant to love and cherish as my own, and name it Fred. This was a fun exhibit to look at and learn about with Ellen Picken.