Bouquets to Art: Designers Paint With Flowers

There are flower arrangements, and then there is floral artistry. It’s the latter you will see this week at the de Young Museum in San Francisco during Bouquets to Art. The event has some of Northern California’s best floral designers re-creating masterpieces in the museum’s permanent collection with plant materials and flowers. Some of them are literal re-creations, others are abstract, and a few are done with a slight wink and a subtle smile. All will prompt you to see the art in a new way or fire up your own floral creativity, or both. Here are some of the arrangements that are gracing the galleries this week.

Photos by Drew Altizer, courtesy of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Bouquets to Art
Location: The de Young museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., April 14 through April 19, 2015
Info: The event includes special lunches and flower-arranging demonstrations by international designers. Tickets may be purchased in advance online or by phone. Ticket info

Art: Gerhard Richter, “Strontium”
Designer: Waterlily Pond

Natasha Lisitsa and Daniel Schultz are known for creating dramatic, mammoth works for the event. They didn’t disappoint this year with Concentrik, a giant C-shaped arc, crafted from 100 Dutch gloriosas, 120 amaryllises, 60 Japanese gloriosas, 250 pincushion proteas and a whopping 1,000 wooden dowels. The piece is 15 feet in diameter and weighs in at 900 pounds. It’s seen here during Monday night’s opening gala.


Art: Robert Henri, “Lady in Black With a Spanish Scarf (O in Black With a Scarf)”
Designer: Plumweed Flowers

Designer Monique Duncan of Plumweed Flowers has waited for a decade to try her hand at re-creating this artwork, a much-loved painting in the museum collection that depicts a regal redhead with a cool gaze. When she got the chance, she decided to go big, as in a life-size figure wrought mostly from kiwi vines and dark, velvety textured roses. These materials are arranged over a metal clothing rack she borrowed from a local department store.


Art: Alexander Pope, “The Wild Swan”
Designer: Chestnut & Vine Floral Design

This is another well-known painting at the de Young, and it shows the graceful lines of a dead swan. But in the hands of designer Svenja Brotz, the bird flies again. “I decided to create a rising phoenix,” she says. To do it, she worked with a metalsmith to create an avian form. To that she added roughly 550 leaves (mostly eucalyptus) and 300 crespida to bring the bird to life. It was a painstaking process, and on Monday morning, moments after affixing the last leaf, she was clearly glad to have the swan leave the nest: “I’m very, very glad to be done,” she said.


Art: Thomas Westerman Wood, “Moses, the Baltimore News Vendor” and “Market Woman”
Designer: Garden Party

In the mid-19th century, this pair of paintings was created showing a man with newspapers in his hand and a woman carrying a basket of flowers.


In modern times, designer Amy Romano Vassar and assistant Brianna Moniz married papers and flowers to create this memorable arrangement.


Art: John Wollaston, “Elizabeth North Plumstead (Later Mrs. William Elliot)”
Designer: Francesca’s Flowers & Gardens

The evocative power of the floral arrangements can be seen in this arrangement. The inspiration is a portrait, left, done in 1758. More than 250 years later, you can almost see the living form of Mrs. Elliot in this piece crafted with baby’s breath, roses and spray-painted leaves.


Art: Rolph Scarlett, “Abstraction XI”
Designer: Empire Floral

“I looked at this painting, and I saw a sunset, cactus, color, texture and layering,” says designer Constance Oaks. “I chose it because I love color.” The designer cut and spray-painted acrylic forms to mimic the artist’s abstract shapes.


Art: William Bradford, “Scene in the Arctic”
Designer: Belle Flora

Designer Hiromi Nomura admits that selecting a painting with no living plant life is an unconventional choice. “I thought the glacier was really beautiful and calm,” she says. “I wanted to re-create that icy feeling and transport people to that peaceful world filled with cool beauty.” She did it with agave and thistles on a molten wax base.



Art: Irving Ramsey Wiles, “The Sonata”
Designer: Fleur De Vie Exotic Floral Designs

The painting shows two young women playing a piano and a violin. The designers honed in on the violin, re-creating it with purple ti leaves and calla lilies and adorning it with a succulent and miniature gold horse. Why is the horse used as the violin’s bridge? Perhaps the 19th-century critic Henry Tuckerman said it best: “To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy than attempt to fully understand.”

Whether you enjoy the event from the perspective of an art scholar or with a love for flowers, there is something here for you.

More:
See the works on display at past Bouquets to Art events
Livable Luxury at the 2015 Pasadena Showcase House of Design

URL: Bouquets to Art: Designers Paint With Flowers http://www.decor-ideas.org/cases-view-id-25924.html