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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Matchmaking on the Wedding Day
Georgia Silvera Seamans and other family members of a lucky bride and groom take on a human flower project the morning of a summer wedding.
For a Pittsburgh wedding the bride’s mother, a professional florist, guided the other women-relatives in making bouquets for the whole wedding party
Photo: Joe Seamans
I had watched my mother make bouquets for my brother’s wedding and even helped to wrap the stems, but I had never constructed a wedding bouquet on my own.
This gap in my resume was filled at the wedding of a cousin-in-law this August. A cousin of my husband’s was marrying the daughter of a floral designer. Not only is the bride’s mother a working florist, she’s a great teacher. She and the mother of the groom organized a bouquet-making class for the women relatives to take place the morning of the wedding. (Prior days’ activities had included cookie making and Bollywood dancing lessons at the bride’s mehndi—though the bride is not of Indian descent).
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Flowers Raise the Bar for Art
To mark the end of summer (please!) an Austin gallery goes lushly avant-garde.
Mario Gaitan’s arrangement of carnations, coxcomb, yarrow and ducks makes a quizzical counterpoint to
Tony Saladino’s abstract painting.
Photo: Human Flower Project
“Today’s the last day!” we chirped.
“…the last hour of the last day,” Judy Taylor replied. Taylor’s Gallery Shoal Creek capped off an excruciating Austin summer with a four-day show of floral installations. While the city has been withering in record heat and drought, Taylor mounted “In Bloom” in defiance.
Many fine art museums – including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts – have arranged these jutxaposition/exhibitions for years. Other art galleries have likely tried it too, but this August—as even the lantana shrivels – seeing a fence of long-stemmed calla lilies and a diorama with golden yarrow trees and hillocks of red coxcomb has a greater power to shock than Chris Bearden or Andres Serrano. In a drought like ours, flowers are avant-garde. (See a slideshow of the whole installation here.”)
Friday, June 12, 2009
Falling for Judy Garland
“Over the top” is, for some, an acquired taste—a few trips through the wringer may help get you there.
Judy Garland singing before a wall of roses
“Born in a Trunk” from “A Star is Born,” 1954
Agony has its rewards.
For some fine people (“fine” we can call them now) it builds character; for everyone, it changes capacity.
Like the capacity for Judy Garland. Back when the entertainment industry was still “show business,” she was IT, and we were very young – pre-agony. Her big stagy gestures, bow-shaped mouth painted red, the emaciated body and dyed black hair were horrifying to a ten year old in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky. How freaky. How needy! We were trying to acquire a completely different cultural temperature: cool. To be loved while gliding under the radar, not tap-dancing, arm-flinging, hair-twisting for approval. Judy’s blatant cravings – and vaudeville aesthetic – were side-show bizarre. We were kind of embarrassed for her, but mainly we were grossed out.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
HFQ #7: The Floral Part of No
How should a person handle unwanted gifts of flowers?
Someone who for obvious reasons wants to remain anonymous has written to say s/he’s being deluged with flower deliveries. S/he recently broke off a dating relationship, and the other person has continued to try making contact via emails, text messages, and phone calls. When our correspondent blocked those sorts of communications, s/he began receiving flowers at work from the ex.