Bio-designer Zena Holloway goes back to basics with her organic sculptures, fashioned from wheatgrass grown at home. Words Paula McWaters, Photographs Andrew Montgomery

By Molly Blair

Published: Wednesday, 19 April 2023 at 12:00 am

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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 grass roots, which are ideal because they naturally mesh together. “Each cereal crop has a different root structure,” she explains. “Rye grass 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.

The key to Zena’s multi-textured designs – many of which echo the corals, jellyfish and sea fans she has seen underwater – is a beeswax template, which she carves with repeated patterns for the roots to grow into. Intriguingly, Zena reports that the seeds make a snap, crackle and pop noise when she waters. “It’s as though they are communicating, saying ‘Hey, the water’s this way’. Nature knows much more than I do. She is the best collaborator.”