The daughter of renowned knife maker Brian Harrison and celebrated fiber artist Ana Harrison, and granddaughter of Michigan wildlife woodcarver Gene C. Harrison, Brooke Monette grew up in Michigan’s upper peninsula on her family’s sawmill. She is primarily self-taught, but has taken classes and attended workshops on oils and watercolors since 1995. Brooke revels in forging her own path through the jungle of methods and techniques, and prefers the freedom of self-discovery to formal instruction. She has been exhibiting her work since 2002, and is a former member of the Guild of Artists and Artisans, and the now disbanded Ann Arbor Women Artists. She maintains membership in the American Orchid Society, Bromeliad Society International, Southeast Michigan Bromeliad Society, Michigan Cactus and Succulent Society, and the American Begonia Society. She currently serves on the board of directors for the Ann Arbor Orchid Society and the Southeast Michigan Bromeliad Society, where she is also the current president. 

     The food on the family table was provided by the harvest of old-growth timber, and her family used the same wood to build and heat their homes as well. Her grandparents gardened, and she and her brother stole the green beans as snacks during their days running wild while their parents and grandfolks worked. Brooke spent nearly all her time outdoors among the pines and cedars of the Hiawatha National Forest. She watched ferns stretch out and grow tall in the spring, and made forts in the tall grass. She explored mystical woods and swamps that brought old European fairy-tales to life in her imagination, rife with mosses and lichen and little men that disappeared if one tried to look directly at them. The wild years in the forest still possess a magic that enchants her when she thinks of these secret places. Today, Brooke is a vegan, a former plant biology student at the University of Michigan, and a collector of exotic plants. Her life continues to grow more intimately entwined with the botanical world.

     In fact, all the time she's spent among plants has caused her to question the possibility of plant consciousness. It’s a fascinating prospect, one which has been explored by Olaf Stapledon in his epic science fiction novel “Starmaker,” and which is currently under research in numerous institutions. It has been found that seedlings which are siblings will position themselves as they grow in a manner that allows them to share light exposure equally. How they recognize one another was initially thought to be through their root systems, but experimentation found contradictory evidence, so the method of recognition remains unknown. For these reasons (among many more), Brooke chooses to focus her work on plants, giving them the artistic respect that is often granted people. After all, photosynthesis is the most important reaction on the planet; without it, there would be neither oxygen nor food. Among Brooke's goals is to draw attention to the world’s silent heroes─ plants.