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Abstract
This thesis project explores the influence of the iconic California poppy on the visual and material culture of the Golden State between 1880-1930, in order to understand how and why a poppy-centric image of the burgeoning state emerged at the turn of the century. By studying how self-taught and professional makers translated the poppies of the landscape into wood, silver, clay, thread, paper, and paint, and how California residents subsequently interacted with the living and artificial poppy, I complicate how we have come to understand California as a place, state, idea, and aesthetic. In part a cultural and environmental history of the California poppy, this project investigates the inherent tension between the poppy’s symbolic deployment as a vehicle for cultural and economic growth in California and the human-driven environmental changes originating in the nineteenth century that have led to its demise. In this paper, I focus on four conceptual issues: state identity formation, “native” identities, living things, and artificial things. These concepts, although seemingly at odds with each other, were bound together by the California poppy in the formation of a California state identity at the turn of the twentieth century.
