psychedelic light composition
The third element of Radiate is in the visitor center, an eight-part composition of lighting gel acetate, shimmer organza, and nylon thread that follows the center’s window shapes.

August 4, 2025

Words: Annie Block

Photography: Courtesy of Rachel Hayes Studio

Textile Art Blooms at the Chicago Botanic Garden

NeoCon hasn’t been the only event drawing throngs to the Windy City this season. “Patterned by Nature,” at the Chicago Botanic Garden through September 21, is another must-see for plant as well as design enthusiasts. Flora-inspired installations by mostly women artists are found across the main and satellite campuses, including Arquicostura Studio founder Raquel Rodrigo’s Future, 10-by-19-foot embroideries of the echinacea flower, and naturally dyed textiles titled Noticing by Field & Gardner’s Kristin Field.

The biggest contribution comes from Oklahoma-based artist Rachel Hayes, who created several large-scale fabric compositions for the main gardens as well as the Farm on Ogden that bring to mind Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass, Frank Stella paintings, or crocheted granny squares. Capping both bonsai courtyards and the lobby of the visitor center is the three-part Radiate.

Rachel Hayes Unfurls Textile Magic at the Chicago Botanic Garden

rainbow canopies over a courtyard
For “Patterned by Nature,” at the Chicago Botanic Garden through September 21, Oklahoma-based artist Rachel Hayes fabricated Radiate, a pair of site-specific, 45-foot-square textile canopies for the center’s two outdoor bonsai courtyards.
psychedelic light composition
In the visitor center, the third element of Radiate, is an eight-part composition of lighting gel acetate, shimmer organza, and nylon thread that follows the center’s window shapes.

“I organized blocks of color into dynamic arrangements based on grids, not unlike designing a garden into segments,” says Hayes, whose “hybrid forms” synchronize craft-based textiles with monumental, architectural space; appeared in a 2018 collaboration with Missoni at Milan Design Week; and respond to light, wind, and, in this case, fauna: Birds perch on the cables supporting the courtyard artwork, which also shades the trees, some of them 1,200 years old.

“After all the engineering factors are sorted comes the fun part: a color and balance game of opaqueness, translucency, darks and lights, brightness and contrast,” she says. Upcoming fun for Hayes is her most substantial commission to date, for the Georgia Museum of Art’s newly refurbished sculpture garden, debuting August 23 and installed through July 2027.

Gaze at These Colorful Installations at the Chicago Botanic Garden

colorful canopy outside facility
Ebb and Flow, also by Hayes, is installed at the Farm on Ogden, Chicago Botanic’s multiuse facility that contributes to a healthy urban community by bringing food, health, and jobs together in one location.
brightly colored canopies over water
The canopies are composed of hundreds of panels of water- and air-permeable industrial textiles—ranging from white Polyfab agricultural mesh to colored Serge Ferrari sunscreen fabric. Hayes machine sewed them together herself, and they can withstand 1,500 pounds of force per cable, D-ring, and eye-hook connection point.

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