2026 Spring Bulb Show Installation

For the fourth year in a row, we have reimagined the central artistic element of the bulb show to support and showcase student artwork by awarding student artists the opportunity to create original installations. This project aims to foster collaboration among and between students and the botanic garden, and for the students to meet the dynamic challenges and rewards of designing, fabricating and installing site-specific, commissioned work. 

The prompt to which students were asked to respond in their proposals was Doing and making as a way of knowing: What materializes from an artistic process that seeks to engage and investigate the living world? In conceiving of their proposals, applicants were asked to consider the material, historic and aesthetic qualities of the bulb show itself, in addition to accounting for the physical infrastructure of the greenhouse space. This year’s installations were created by two student artists: Annika Peterson ’26 and Cola Sh i’28. 

Cola Shi ’28 is a sophomore double majoring in Studio Art and Computer Science, whose practice centers on landscape, material exploration, photography, and interactive multimedia installations. Born in China and working across cultural and environmental contexts, she has developed a sensitivity to atmosphere, emotional resonance, and spatial perception. Her work explores multisensory experience, creating spaces that engage both body and mind.

In her installation The Temperature of Breath, Cola asks: what if we could feel time the way plants do? 

Inside the greenhouse, temperature moves quietly from cool to warm and back again, carried through light and air. Through thermochromic color shifts and a gently undulating structure, she translates this environmental rhythm into something perceptible to the human body. As viewers walk around the table and touch the surface, warmth gradually becomes visible, suggesting a shared atmosphere between human and vegetal life. The work invites visitors to pause, breathe, and sense the quiet cycles unfolding around them.

Annika Peterson ’26 is currently a Smith senior pursuing a degree in English and Film & Media Studies. In her time at Smith, Annika has served as captain of the field hockey team and as student liaison to the Film department. A longtime analog artist, Annika’s studies have expanded her world to new modes of creation in the digital realm with video and interactive code. While digital methods may have opened new possibilities, Annika’s creative bias has always leaned towards the physical realm of making and creating by hand. In her art and academics, Annika is interested in exploring the impact of technology on our relationship with the material world.

In response to the prompt “doing and making as a way of knowing”, Reflections makes transparent the physical process of reproduction to prompt viewers to observe and experience the bulb show more closely. Curated to mirror and mimic the botanic spectacle below, Reflections is composed of over a dozen reconstructed bulbs floating midair. To emphasize the familiarity with form that recreating each petal and pattern required, the sculptures are composed of wire, a medium that holds memory. Each sculpture in Reflections thus links design to intentionality—everything you see is the result of conscious, physical manipulation. By deconstructing each blossom into component parts for reconstruction by hand, Reflections isolates in time the process of seeing and doing through static installation. Tangible embodiments of careful noticing, Reflections cultivates attention towards the forms concealed beneath our naturalized perceptions. By translating form from its organic context to a new medium it was defamiliarized: made fresh, tangible, and full of life. This has always been the joy of art for Annika, watching the world close and reborn again through the process of creation.