A flower that will be hard to miss is being planted today at the North Shore Riverfront Park, next to PNC Park, in conjunction with "Flowers Observed, Flowers Transformed," the 10th anniversary exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum.

Photo illustration courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery Installation of Marc Quinn's 20-foot orchid sculpture will begin on the North Shore this afternoon

British artist Marc Quinn's sculpture, "The Incredible World of Desire," is a 20-foot-high steel and resin orchid (Phragmipedium sedenii) that the artist hopes will stir thoughts about subjects ranging from Darwinian theories of natural selection to the prominent sensuality of the natural world.

Quinn has two works in the museum exhibition, "Italian Landscape" and "Reconstruction by Number," a painting that recalls Warhol's paint-by-numbers pieces. The orchid sculpture will remain on the North Shore through October.

The installation is a joint venture of the museum, the Riverlife Task Force and the Sports and Exhibition Authority, with support from the Pittsburgh Pirates and funding by The Heinz Endowments. Information about the project will be available at this week's 7 to 10 p.m. free "Good Friday" event at the museum. For information, call 412-237-8300.

Art & science workshops

The Mattress Factory and the Carnegie Science Center are conducting three workshops, beginning tonight, that examine the connection between art and science, particularly as applied by resident artists to installations they've created for the North Side museum.

They'll be held from 6 to 9 p.m. today ("Engineering Art"), June 29 ("Chemical Transformations in Art") and July 6 ("Make Some Noise: The Art and Science of Sound").

The fee is $35 per workshop or $90 for all three ($30 and $80 for museum and center members). A light dinner and materials are included. For information or to register, call 412-231-3169.

Naked in Cleveland

Artist Spencer Tunick -- internationally known for staging large public events during which hundreds of people disrobe simultaneously, gather momentarily to be photographed, dress and disband -- will hold one of his shoots Saturday in Cleveland.

The event is being hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art/Cleveland, which presented a solo exhibition of his photographs earlier this year.

Readers may remember seeing some of his images in "Naked: The Naked Body in Contemporary Video, Photography and Performance" at Wood Street Galleries, Downtown, in 2001.

More than 1,000 individuals are expected to participate, most from the Cleveland area but also from all but nine of the 50 states and from 16 foreign countries from Singapore to Slovakia.

A documentary about Tunick's projects that aired on HBO presented them as curiously discreet, and because of their variety and configuration the bodies exhibit vulnerability rather than sexuality.

The event will take place at 4 a.m. at an undisclosed outdoor downtown location. The resultant photograph will be unveiled at the museum from 6 to 9 p.m. Aug. 6 during a free public event.

For information, call 216-421-8671 or visit www.contemporaryart.org.

Ligonier lecture

Author and art historian Margaret Bartley will speak at noon June 30 at the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Ligonier Valley, on the current exhibition "American Portraiture: The Figurative Works of Wayman Adams."

Bartley, who lives in New York's Adirondack region, has written about and curated an exhibition about Adams' Old Mill Art School. She's writing a biography of Russian-American cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, whom Adams painted in 1942. Among Adams' clients were Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, Alice Longworth Roosevelt and B.F. Goodrich.

Admission to the program, which includes lunch, is $10, members $7. For information or reservations (required by Monday), call 724-238-6015. The exhibition continues through Aug. 29.

CAPA Astrovision screen

Two five-minute video loops are currently running on the outdoor screen of The Creative and Performing Arts High School, Downtown.

"WaterBox" by instructor Dennis Childers reconfigures shots of the Allegheny River to create a meditation on water resources. "Stair Dance," a collaborative work between the Dance and Visual Arts Departments conceived by Childers and instructor Kevin Maloney, was filmed on a school stairway by Ken Lovorn and Justin Wilhem and by Jollie Peters, who also edited the piece.