Human Flower Project
Religious Rituals
Rome, ITALY
London, ENGLAND
Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND
Saturday, February 20, 2010
A Feel for the Real and the Artificial
When are artificial flowers in order, and when will only real blossoms do? Sandy Ao comes upon floral irony in Kolkata’s New Market.
A shop of artificial flowers, the only one amid many
flower stalls at Kolkata’s New Market
Photo: Sandy Ao
How do you feel about artificial flowers? Maybe these other terms—“silk” “faux” “plastic” “handmade” “fake” – would color your answer.
A couple of weeks ago, we visited Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen, Texas, a beautiful Spanish style home and surrounding patios, gardens, and estate that are now an international gathering place for birders. On a sideboard in the livingroom stood a huge arrangement of lilies and what looked like proteas flowers. “Are these real!?” we yelped – and were told quietly, no.
There’s always a sheepish, sunken feeling then, at least for us. We tend to look away, as if after all there had been nothing to admire. What is that? Is it having been duped?
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Chitra Pothi Lives On
Illuminated letters or temple decorations? Palm leaf painting dates back to medieval India and survives among artisans in a few small villages of Orissa.
An artisan demonstrated palm leaf painting at a Kolkata fair, Dec. 2009
Photo: Sandy Ao
Back before there were computer screens to write on, there was this stuff called paper, made from plant material. It’s true.
And back before digital cameras and Photoshop, there was an image making process called painting. It, too, involved plant materials: bloodroot and indigo for pigments, cotton, papyrus, and linen for canvases—or in the case of Chitra Pothi of India, leaves of palm.
Sandy Ao, long an admirer of this vernacular art form, made an exciting discovery last month at Kolkata’s New Market after many years of looking.
“I simply love these palm leaf paintings, Chitra Pothi or Talapatrachitra,” she writes. “I was given a palm leaf painting by my Greek friend ~ Hara Papadoniou Gupta’s husband. That was way back in 1972.”
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).
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Dussehra: Tools of Life
On the Hindu festival Dussehra, every implement or conveyance that helps someone make a living gets recognition—a garland of marigolds.
A bicycle, honored as a part of one Mumbai citizen’s
livelihood, on the festival of Dussehra
Photo: Anil P.
We’re late for the party – and we’re also 8300 miles away. So forgive and enjoy our overdue tribute to an auspicious Hindu holiday, observed Monday, September 28th this year.
Our friend in Delhi, Lubna Kably, notified us the day-of in tactful and globally-sensitive verb tenses (in Austin, we’re some 12 hours behind): “Today was Dussehra,” wrote Lubna. “Hindus adorn their cars and other equipment with flowers and worship them. Unfortunately, don’t have photographs to share.”
Sharing the information was and is plenty, Lubna! It sent us onto the time-blind info highway, where we arrived at Anil P’s “windy skies.” Anil provides a rickshaw by rickshaw, garland by garland account of Dussehra in Mumbai.