Human Flower Project
Las Flores y Palmas de Panchimalco
Photo: Manuel Castillo
One Sunday in May, the village of Panchimalco, El Salvador, holds a doubly honorific celebration of the Virgin Mary. Statues of the Virgen del Rosario and the Virgen de Concepción, the town’s two patron saints, are paraded through the streets under a canopy of decorations. These natural ornaments mix local palms with tropical flowers, a glorious effect like the plumage of some supernatural bird. La fiesta de las flores y palmas took place this year on May 4. For more on this highly floral religious tradition see our story.
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Quiet Poodles, Comfy Heels
Photo: Dianne Kade
Dianne Kade’s miniature poodle is guaranteed not to yap. “I make them out of chrysanthemums and sometimes use other flowers like orchids for the ears,” the florist says. “I have the puppy lying down in a basket and the teddy is sitting up.” These arrangements have been a real hit with children during hospital stays, she reports.
Dianne also makes high heels that don’t pinch (because they’re filled with roses, not your foot). Her Artistry in Bloom Floral Design Studio is in Victoria, British Columbia. Many thanks, Dianne.
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Mile Long Lei for May Day
Photo: Lucy Pemoni, for AP
Volunteers strung together more than 81,000 orchids, plumeria, and other tropical flowers May 1, Lei Day, in Honolulu. They created a garland 5336 feet long, and registered the human flower project with the Guinness Book of World Records. When completed the lei reached half way around Kapiolani Park, the largest park in Hawaii.
Lei are traditionally given as honoraria, and this would be no exception. Mayor Mufi Hannemann, 2008 Lei Day Queen Paulette Kahalepuna and sponsors of the celebration were to give the giant lei to the crowd, inviting them to take segments of it home as souvenirs. Kaiulani Vincent Kauahi, an organizer of Lei Day, said, “We will also take pieces to the Royal Mausoleum to be placed on the graves of the ali’i,” Hawaii’s sacred ancestors.
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Obscure No More
Photo: Harry Burton
A tree frog perches on Jude the Obscure, one of the hardiest of the David Austin roses. Harry Burton sent us this delightful photo from his garden on Salt Spring Island, in British Columbia. A flower lover, Harry’s real claim to botanical fame is his organic apple orchard, featuring 350 varieties. His 10th annual Salt Spring Island Apple Festival is scheduled for September 28, 2008.
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Lilac Lullabye
Photo: Human Flower Project
In late April-early May, the thoughts of every native Kentuckian turn back home. And some years, some of us are fortunate enough actually to get there. We made it this spring, at the peak of dogwood season. There were lambs all over the hill at cousin Ben Ardery’s farm between Paris and Cynthiana, and in his guest bedroom (featured here lavenderly, in the fall of 2006) there was another human flower feat. Branches from the three varieties of lilacs blooming in Ben’s yard stood in a crystal vase, a welcome and the sweetest lullabye any traveler could hope for. What an antidote for nostalgia! You CAN go home again. So go. It’s better than you remembered.
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Cinderella-Wear, for Spring
Photo: Anne Liesener
Better than a glass slipper, this pump—made of stems, leaves, moss and an orchid—looks like prince bait! Anne Liesener at least bagged a photo award from the Canadian Academy of Floral Art with this entry. Her photo won best of the “My Feet Are Killing Me!” category, 2007. For all the winners, and more, see CAFA’s site .
Many thanks to our friend Richard Seekins of The Flower Place for the dazzling tip.
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Pond of Echo - Jay Yan
Photo: Jay Yan
Chinese-American artist Jay Yan delights in playing gentle jokes. Here is his computer-generated Pond of Echo. Viewers who stand before it see their body shapes mirrored in patterns of opening or closing daffodils. Jay says that among media artists, the mirror technique has become a kind of shtick, and audiences are happy to vogue along. “People really like to look at themselves!” Jay says, having watched crowds interact with mirror-art-works. “I realized the narcissism in these pieces never get really addressed. The authors themselves are narcissistic about their new found ability to create a mirror (and) they ignore this as well. So I wanted to make a mirror to address this specifically...” made of narcissus flowers.
For another of Jay’s pranksterish floral works, see our post on the artist’s Whisper.
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Jacques de Gheyn’s Demonstration Piece
Photo: via Art Daily
The Kimball Art Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas, purchased a human-floral gem: “Vase of Flowers with a Curtain,” painted by Jacques de Gheyn in 1615. Here is an immense variety of flowers: lilies, iris, many roses and tulips, as well as shattered petals, a fallen carnation and rapt green lizard. The artist thought so highly of this work that he kept it on hand his studio—proof of what he could offer. The Kimball‘s director, Malcolm Warner, said, that the museum had been shopping for a Dutch still life to add to its collection, “one that was not only technically brilliant and representative of the genre but also quite outstanding in some way—a ‘destination’ piece. Highly unusual and maybe even unique in scale for this early date, and remarkable too for its grandeur and theatricality (note the touch of illusionistic showmanship in the painting of the green curtains), the De Gheyn was our answer.”
According to art historians De Gheyn produced fewer than 50 paintings including the first ”vanitas," which now hangs at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Once the Kimball’s conservators get to work on that old varnish, this may indeed be a Ft. Worth “destination,” to rival Gilley’s.
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Rose Window Garden—Christchurch
Photo: Frank Green
For the 2008 Festival of Flowers in Christchurch, New Zealand, landscaper Michael Batten designed a “Rose Window Garden” in keeping with the city’s Gothic cathedral. Many thanks to Marise Richards for sending along this stunning photograph, by Frank Green. Marise announces that next year’s festival, the 20th anniversary, will take place February 14- March 15. If you’re making travel plans, keep in mind that the festival’s culmination will begin March 11, 2009, when a carpet of flowers is laid down the cathedral’s central aisle.
Here’s much more information about the Festival of Flowers. And how’s this for a dreamy two-fer? The Ellerslie International Flower Show takes place in Christchurch the same week.
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Mullickghat Flower Market Burns
Photo: Sandy Ao
One of the largest flower markets in all Asia, Mullickghat, in Kolkata, India, burned down Friday night, April 11. “Over 240 of the 263 stalls were gutted,” a devastating loss, coming just before the Bengali New Year on Monday, a major flower holiday. Many thanks to Sandy Ao for this stunning picture, of a flower seller arranging roses Saturday morning amid the charred remains of the market . HFP will provide a full report on Monday.