All Photos By Gail

Luna Ikuta is an artist and designer whose work draws from biology, material science, and media. Operating within multidisciplinary fields, her diverse portfolio emerges from alchemical processes, experimenting with both organic and industrial mediums. Her Distilled Essence (2023), a multi-sensory installation, showcases preserved transparent botanicals, planted within decanters and handblown glass vessels. Drawing inspiration from the Diphylleia Grayi – a flower with the unique phenomenon of turning transparent when wet – Ikuta pioneered a method to replicate this visual characteristic across a myriad of plant species.

Though all plants are identifiable by form, the spectral bodies are void of their biological attributes, and unified under singular plant tissue. The works aim to poeticize an afterlife and to highlight the universal mysteries about the cycles of life.

Although impossible to replicate in this article, the installation also engages with the viewer’s sense of smell. Formulated by the artist, an elixir emitted into the gallery emphasizes the olfactory properties of a synthetically isolated acidic monoterpenoid, an aromatic molecule, found in over 200 living plant species.

Though foreign in nature as an isolated scent, this molecule is a consistent presence within familiar essential oils and the artist interprets it as the sole of the botanical kingdom. Merging science, sent, and sculpture, Ikuta’s installation allows viewers to experience a multisensory paradox of unity within diversity – a distilled essence of nature.

Photographed at the Descanso Gardens in La Cañada, California.