Bouquets to Art 2013: Highlights

This week is Spring Break and I don't have any classes, which is good, since it gave me some time to sort through all the pictures I took at Bouquets to Art last week! I will do a separate post about the fantastic arrangement I got to help out on, but here are a few highlights from this year's exhibition. I just love the creativity that so many of the designers used to interpret their artwork, and the skill involved in creating these pieces. There are more pictures in a Flickr album over here, if you're interested. Enjoy!

I just love this interpretation of Manuel Neri's Seated Girl II by Michael Holmes Designs — great color, shape, and full of attitude, just like the original!

Yoko Klingebiel's design was one of my favorite pieces in the whole exhibition. She captured Dorothy Napangardi's Sandhills with such elegance and restraint (and not to mention skill!).

Nathan Oliveira's Weaver, brought to floral life by Michiko Shimoda. I like how they relate to each other, as if they're in a conversation.

Thomas Hovenden's painting of an abolitionist leader on his way to the gallows, The Last Moments of John Brown, and the brilliant interpretation by Neil Hunt. Genius!

The team of Poppy's Petalworks came up with this pretty design for David Regan's Cod Tureen (not pictured). I love the color, and the contrast in texture between the cork bark and the flower petals.

Friends of Filoli's version of William Joseph McCloskey's Oranges in Tissue Paper. Great choice of materials!

Jessica Rao captured the earthy and rustic feel of George Fuller's Girl and Calf...

...while Yukiko Neibert embraced the striking elegance of Robert Henri's Lady in Black with Spanish Scarf.

An arrangement and its muse: Guy Pène du Bois' Seated Nude, interpreted by the team of Lavender in Sonoma. The skin tones in their flower selection were delicious.

Another female-inspired design: Sunshine Flowers' take on Eastman Johnson's Woman in White Dress. Now who wouldn't love a dress made from the loveliest selection of white flowers?

Books and flowers? Heck yes! Main St. Floragardens shows us how, with their detail-rich interpretation of John Frederick Peto's Job Lot Cheap.

Soft textures and earthy tones in Joan McLellan Tayler's version of Figure of an ancestor or deity.

Swing on over to my Flickr album for more pictures of Bouquets to Art 2013, and check back later this week to learn more about the design I got to work on!

Coming up: Bouquets to Art 2013

How I have lived in the Bay Area for almost nine years and hadn't heard about Bouquets to Art until last year, when the instructor of my floral design class encouraged us to visit this fantastic annual exhibition, I will never know. You'd think that an event combining art and flowers would have been on my radar all along, but it wasn't so. If you have never heard of it either, here's the long and short: Over 100 Bay Area floral designers choose a piece of artwork from the collections of San Francisco's esteemed de Young museum and create an arrangement, drawing inspiration from that particular piece. The arrangements are then put on display alongside the art that inspired them, for a special five-day exhibition.

Bouquets to Art 2013 is coming up next week, and I am extremely excited to be able to say that I helped to work on one very special piece for the exhibit this year. Here are a few impressions from last year's exhibition, and I can't wait for this year's show to open to the public on Tuesday!

Floral Design Seminar with Natasha Lisitsa

Natasha Lisitsa of Waterlily Pond Floral Design is one of the first floral designers whose work I ever registered as something uniquely different and beautiful, more art than craft, and distinctly recognizable. I first saw her work at a bridal show years ago, and have since seen it at weddings and events and of course at the DeYoung museum here in San Francisco, where she is one of the truly memorable contributors to the annual Bouquets to Art exhibit.

Wouldn't you love being greeted by this fantastic arrangement in your entryway?

I had the wonderful opportunity to assist Natasha and her team at a 3-day floral design seminar a few weeks ago, and between the days that I helped to prep and pack and set up for the event, and the time I got to spend watching her demonstrations and lectures and helping out the participants in the design studio, I had the most amazing time. Not only did I get a peek into how she finds her inspiration and goes about executing her ideas, but it also turned out that Natasha and her team are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. (And let's face it — nothing is sadder than to find out that somebody whose work you admire is impossible to be around.)

In the mornings, Natasha and her head designer Carla would demo some of their fantastic arrangements, talk about where the inspiration for each piece came from, and how they executed it. Natasha likes to work with unusual materials and isn't shy to incorporate rattan caning, metal mesh or paper filling material into her arrangements to create intriguing mechanics that don't need to — and shouldn't be — disguised (unlike traditional materials, such as floral foam or tape).

A couple of the designs Natasha and Carla presented on the first day, incorporating ratting caning and paper mesh.

In the afternoons, the seminar participants got to work on their own creations in the workshop studio, and were able to try out many of the materials Natasha and Carla had introduced in the morning sessions. Dye baths for rattan caning, power tools for drilling and screwing, and branches the size of small trees were all lined up along with the more usual floral tools and supplies. None of the students seemed intimidated in the least, and everybody went straight to work. Towards the end of the day, Natasha critiqued every arrangement, and offered candid and insightful advice on how a piece could be improved.

A couple of the students' designs from the first day of the seminar. Aren't they great?

The second day focused on large scale installations, something Natasha is definitely known for. She generously shared information about her workflow, stressed the importance of proper lighting for any floral arrangement, and discussed considerations regarding materials, size and scale, restrictions and many other aspects of creating larger-than-life floral sculptures like Elemental, her 2009 Bouquets to Art contribution. (If you're interested, here is a fascinating time lapse video of the installation of Elemental.)

The painted Manzanita branches in this gorgeous chandelier are somewhat of a signature feature in Natasha's work.

On the third day, the group got a special tour of the San Francisco flower market, and then went on to visit Yerba Buena Gardens, armed with their cameras and sketch pads. The idea was to capture some of the many architectural and landscaping details of this urban parklet, which they were then asked to use as inspiration for an arrangement to complete that same afternoon (think Project Runway challenge). The results were as diverse as they were impressive, and really showed how much the participants had embraced Natasha's affinity for exuberant creative expression and bold use of unusual materials.

During the critique for the Yerba Buena Gardens-inspired arrangements at the end of the third day.

The seminar was hosted in a formerly industrial building in San Francisco's Dogpatch district, which is now home to mostly creative businesses — photographers, event planners, catering companies — and has sweeping views of the city and the East Bay. Natasha and her team had made sure that the seminar participants (some of them from places as far as Florida and Hawaii) got to take in as many of San Francisco's treasures as possible and didn't run out of energy, so they served up tasty breakfasts and lunches from hip local businesses like Kitchenette. We got to use the space of Hands On Gourmet for our lunches, and ever since I'm thinking about possible opportunities to host a cooking class party there.

It was really fantastic to be part of the seminar, and I got a lot of inspiration and new ideas from it that I can't wait to try out. And judging by their enthusiasm, the participants from across the country all felt the same. Thank you, Natasha and team!

Happy New Year!

May 2013 be a happy, healthy, crafty year for you! A fresh start can be exciting, and I wish you the best of luck with your plans and resolutions for the new year.

I was so busy with work and school lately that I didn't find the time to keep things current around here. Hopefully a new schedule and a new year will give me more time and renewed motivation to keep the dust off this little space. I miss it when I don't get around to write about what I've been up to, it's always so nice to be able to look back on creative adventures.

A visit to ribbon paradise

The Ribbonerie is one of those San Francisco stores that you have to see to believe. An entire store just for ribbon? You bet! Ribbon in every imaginable color, a myriad of patterns, dozens of widths and materials, vintage ribbon and newest designs — if you can't find what you're looking for here (or come up with ten new ideas for projects while you're browsing), you may have a real problem.

Paulette Knight has been importing ribbon from all over the world for more than 25 years. It all started with a couple of spools of wired ribbon that she brought home from a vacation in Paris. After she ran her import business out of her apartment for several years, she opened the store in 1997. Florists, event designers and needlework enthusiasts are among her most loyal clients, but a visit to the Ribbonerie is definitely worth it for anybody who can appreciate a beautifully curated collection.

I visited the Ribbonerie on a field trip with my floristry class, and judging by the "Oohs" and "Aahs" coming from our group, Paulette can count on a few new pilgrims headed for her ribbon mecca in the near future. Paulette is also a lovely storyteller and very generously shared her experience as a businesswoman and shopkeeper with us. Merci, Paulette!

My last minute date with Jean Paul Gaultier

The week before last I visited the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at the de Young Museum, just a couple of days before it closed and (hopefully) moved on to another town and another museum. If you ever have the chance to see it somewhere, you should, no matter how much, or little, you care about fashion. The exhibit is fascinating in so many ways: the mannequins come alive thanks to some seriously amazing video projections; sketches, photos and videos let you peak behind the scenes of Gaultier's work; and the breadth of his collections, from 1976 to now, is truly impressive.

To be able to take close-up looks at the details and construction of such iconic haute couture designs was amazing, and it really made the point that fashion like this has a well-deserved place in art museums like the de Young. The vision and creative drive of an artist like Jean Paul Gaultier, paired with his sense for details, courage to explore outside of the norm, and ability to balance beauty, shock value and humor is unique and admirable, no matter what role fashion plays in your own life. Merci, Monsieur Gaultier!

Crocker Art Museum

One of the things I did while I was in Sacramento back in January was to go visit the Crocker Art Museum. I love to go to museums anyway, but it was a rainy and cold day, so this was a perfect escape. The Crocker houses a variety of permanent and temporary exhibitions, but I focused on their collection of Californian and American Art. Here are a few of the pieces I really enjoyed. I love texture in art: brushstrokes and palette knife marks in thick, viscous paint; the surface qualities of ceramics, ranging from rough and unfinished to shiny and polished. I also love the use of color in the works below, from bold contrasts to subtle variations.

If you ever visit the Crocker, don't miss to visit the historic family mansion and art gallery building on the back of the museum (it is connected to the modern Teel Family Pavilion that makes up the majority of the museum since its expansion in 2010). It is magnificent!