OTHER 20th CENTURY BOTANICAL ARTISTS
OF THE SONORAN DESERT
-- MARGARET POPE --

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Margaret began drawing in the mid 1980s after taking a course in scientific illustration at the University of Arizona. Because of her love of plants, particularly all succulents and plants native to the Sonoran Desert, she found that over time these plants became the main subject for her art.

She has done commissioned work for private individuals, businesses and organizations. In 1997 The Arizona Native Plant Society commissioned her to create a poster of Sonoran Desert wildflowers, the first poster of wildflowers native to the Arizona region of the Sonoran Desert. Her work was exhibited in a solo exhibit in 2000 at Tohono Chul Park in Tucson and in the International Juried Exhibit of the American Society of Botanical Artists of 2009 and in other botanical art exhibits in Tucson and Phoenix.

In 2008 Margaret began The Sonoran Desert Florilegium Program, a non-profit organization sponsored by the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society, whose mission it is to promote and preserve botanical art of the Sonoran Desert Region. Her involvement in this project has led to teaching botanical art at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Art Institute and curating a number of small botanical art exhibits.

Prior to becoming an artist Margaret received a B.S. in Science from the University of San Francisco and a Masters in Public Health and Nurse-Midwifery from The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She was in the Peace Corps in India from 1965 to 1968 and worked as a nurse-midwife on the Navajo Reservation in 1970 through 1974.