My Experience Participating in Art in Bloom
I’ll begin this post by expressing the importance and impact of having a few supportive, encouraging people around you. The prompt to participate in Art in Bloom at the Portland Museum of Art stemmed (pun intended) from a simple link to apply posted on my facebook page from a supportive friend who I met while working in a flower shop. This one friend is also the person who encouraged me to pursue this entire venture of flower farming by lending me a book. An important and supportive friend.
It was the seed of excitement I needed to ask myself if I could actually pull something like this off, as I am not a florist. I am a new inexperienced flower farmer who studied art in college and still paints occasionally. I applied to Art in Bloom fully accepting of not being among the 20 designers chosen. Well, shit. I got in and now I have do the damn thing.
We were given a list of about 80 different artworks and architectural details in the museum to choose our top 3 choices from. The floral arrangements needed to express the essence or spirit of the assigned artwork or architecture. It will be viewed from all sides and shall not exceed 24” in height or laterally beyond 15”. We may not use soil, moss, food, ice, balloons, bubbles, confetti, dry rice, glitter, colored water, shells that have not been dried out, and all flower stamens must be removed.
No glue guns, glue, endangered plants, LED lights, or speakers. Our containers must be stable, and water tight, and we must use floral foam or a sustainable alternative like Agra wool. Museum staff will place our pedestals for us.
We are required to freshen our arrangements during the show and replace broken or dead stems and add water.
Top Choice 1. Alex Katz, Wedding Dress
I was not particularly inspired by this exhibit. To be fully honest, I was only thinking that it would be good for business and would potentially drum up some wedding inquiries.
Top Choice 2. The Dead Pearl Diver, by Benjamin Paul Akers
Truly, as a young girl visiting the museum on school trips, this was my favorite museum sculpture. The sculpture is life sized, it tells a story, it is beautifully and masterfully carved. I was enamored on the details. How could anyone carve a net out of marble? It is romantic, and narrative and brings life to an untold story of your own imagination.
Top Choice 3. Newell Convers Wyeth, Georges Islands, Penobscot Bay, Maine
The view, the vista, the smell of cold salty air whipping you in the face as you smell pine, sea and land. This was my third choice.
I was assigned to Paul Benjamin Akers, ‘The Dead Pearl Diver’. A life sized, white marble sculpture of a reclining figure in their final moments. I was very excited and feeling creatively confident. I live for the creative process, and diving back into a new project, I felt like I was in college again. I had the freedom to push myself with flower arranging and I could open that creative side of my brain that seemed like it had been closed since the last painting I made. Before my daughter was born.
I was also feeling stressed, realizing that we live in Maine and Art in Bloom is in March. March meaning no farm fresh flowers. March meaning that I don’t have a resale license yet as a new business to be able to purchase affordable flowers. Flowers are expensive. Flowers are not grown sustainably this time of year.
Flowers are shipped across countries and continents for one week of enjoyment. I also have not built a network of connections with large flower vendors like other well established florists have. This was my first challenge- to source flowers. I sourced my flowers from Sam’s club, local grocery stores, an online site called, Flower Moxie and ordered backup stems for refreshing my arrangement from Harmon’s Floral Company.
My flowers came and I am so appreciative for the effort it took every stem to arrive. Someone planted, cultivated, grew, shipped and delivered these to me and to my community. From so far away. Not to eat, but to look at, smell and enjoy for a moment of serotonin during a lifeless season in Maine.
A kindred soul, Morgan Wagner-Holtz from Elder Farm & Forage @elderfarmandforage
Installation day was exciting with designers arriving at the museum’s loading dock with their creations. We are escorted by museum staff through the back entrance of the museum to our exhibit space like little celebrities. I was feeling special and a part of something worthwhile like a shared mission to bring fresh flowers to people in the dead of winter.
The Dead Pearl Diver lives in a circular open gallery in the center of the museum, with high traffic and a lot of windows. The statue is low to the ground, with beautifully detailed netting draped across the figure’s nude body, and shells delicately placed in the mounded rubble of which he rests.
There is an air of competition and camaraderie and as I shared an elevator with another designer who was just as excited and nervous as I was. We both felt somehow supportive of one another as we really began to understand and relate to each other’s emotions, trials, and triumphs. Seeing all of the amazing floral arrangements come together so uniquely to express each designer’s personality was a gift.
I was inspired by the Pearl Diver’s STORY, not the sculpture’s dying corpse. I did not create an arrangement of beige and white flowers to visually represent the statue in shape in form . I dove deeper into what his experience might have looked like, to fetch a pearl in the deep blue. I feel I need to defend my interpretation because of one harsh but honest review.
While at the museum with my family, filled with pride to show them the project I have been sweating and stressing over for the past three months, a gentleman full of disappointment and expertise expressed his utter dissatisfaction with my arrangement. I listened and nodded and bit my tongue because I REALLY did want to hear an honest review. And I got one. “I really just don’t see it. I don’t see the figure in the arrangement. I could see if she maybe turned the shell upside down and put flowers on it that way it could be more interesting, I just don’t see his form, its a nice arrangement but I don’t get it." on and on. I smiled and asked the man if he read the plaque. He said yes, and I believed him. Maybe he just didn’t GET IT.
We were allowed about 80 words. My plaque read “My interpretation of the Dead Pearl Diver’s cold marble figure is mimicked in a swath of cool flower tones, draped carefully to honor the androgynous elongated form in their final moments. While in a greedy pursuit of plucking the perfect prized pearl from the depths of the ocean’s seabed, the Dead Pearl Diver has ultimately succumbed to drowning. This arrangement commemorates the Diver’s love and quest for nature’s beauty. The flowers will eventually also die but the marble shall outlive generations.
With a deep breath, he walked off and I pushed my daughter’s stoller back to my family feeling utterly embarrassed and crushed by a few words I thought could not bother me. But also proud… that I did NOT introduce myself as the artist. He was in the next room, dissatisfied with that arrangement as well. And the next. Oh and the next one. Then I got mad. And almost protective of the joy he stole from the others viewing the work, the HARD WORK, blood sweat and tears that went into the arrangements from these other designers and growers who pay for their materials, months of preparation and labor to entertain critical “art appreciators”. My high was low and my head was hot and spinning and my tongue hurt.
Earlier this same day, I had sold three more flower subscriptions, and had some great news on a new creative project I wanted to pursue. It was supposed to be a good day. It still was. And I got over it. And next time I’ll make a better arrangement. Maybe even one that is more visually representative. And I will still have a good day. And I won’t be disappointed.
I am so thankful for the positive, encouraging, constructive feedback and enjoyment from so many other viewers and museum patrons and fellow designers. And thankful to the museum for this experience. I might even apply again, and do a better job. And introduce myself. I’m just a simple farmer who occasionally paints, grows flowers and APPRECIATES art and does her best.