Grass roots

Bio-designer Zena Holloway goes back to basics with her organic sculptures, fashioned from wheatgrass grown at home

- PAULA MCWATERS

A love of nature – and particularly of the sea during her career as an underwater photographer – has led artist and bio-designer Zena Holloway to a whole new world of experimentation. For the past few years, she has been creating sustainable sculptures, vessels, wall hangings, homewares and fashion pieces from a lacy, web-like fabric she grows herself from wheatgrass roots. The result is extraordinarily beautiful, ethereal even: webs of coiled and interwoven roots that she manipulates to create the most intricate of patterns.

It was reading an article on bio-design, about people growing material from mushrooms, that first excited her interest and, after dabbling with that, she started experimenting with grassroots, which are ideal because they naturally mesh together. “Each cereal crop has a different root structure,” she explains. “Ryegrass is crinkly, like wool, while wheatgrass root is long, straight and strong.” The turnaround is quick: Zena germinates the wheatgrass seeds in a light room in her home-cum-studio in west London, for ten to 14 days, monitoring and watering it carefully before harvesting. Nothing is wasted, as the grass she cuts off is used as chicken feed.