Passion Flowers

The annual Art in Bloom weekend at the Museum of Fine Arts offers local ikebana artists a chance to shine.

BY GRETCHEN WARD WARREN

PHOTOS/DALE LEIFESTE

What is it that makes flowers so enchanting? Maybe the fragrance. Certainly, the dazzling array of colors they add to our lives. For floral designers, though, it’s the individual essence of each flower that fascinates, as well as the potential to reshape blooms and branches by artful trimming.

Evidence of their artistry will soon be on display at Art in Bloom at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). This is the 26th anniversary of the popular event, which annually draws the museum’s largest crowds. People flock to admire the beautiful, creative floral arrangements, each of which has been inspired by a particular art work. “Interpreting them is a challenge,” says one designer. “Every great work of art has a mood, an essence. That’s what you have to try to capture, but without exactly copying the picture.”

Art in Bloom was initially organized by the Garden Club of St. Petersburg, one of whose members was inspired to do so after seeing the famous Art in Bloom at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Currently, it is presented in St. Pete by the MFA in conjunction with its support organization, The Margaret Acheson Stuart Society. The Society uses the occasion to host two major fundraising events for the museum, an evening gala and a formal sit-down lunch with an entertaining program. To headline both, a renowned member of the floral industry is invited. Margot Shaw, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Flower Magazine is this year’s guest.

Among those whose floral design work is showcased at AIB are members of area garden clubs, Ikebana International, local florists, and private individuals with noted skills in flower arranging. Being invited to participate is considered an honor. Each year, the Museum selects approximately 50 artworks to be featured in the exhibition. Arrangers are asked to indicate their first, second and third choices of a work to interpret, but the museum makes the final decision about who to assign to each.

“You don’t always get your first choice,” says Jeanne Houlton, President of the Florida Chapter of the Ichiyo School of Ikebana. Houlton has exhibited at Art in Bloom for 24 years and says it can be a challenge. She confesses to hanging a blown-up photograph of her assigned artwork on the wall in her ikebana studio: “I stare and stare at it, sometime for weeks, until inspiration hits me.”

Another longtime designer always researches the artist of her assigned work. “I try to learn what inspired him or her to create, the background story, I guess you could say.” One year she was assigned a painting of a weary soldier, seated in a barren battlefield, holding a gun. The only colors in the painting were browns, tan and black. “These were not colors one normally associates with flowers,” she recalls. “Fortunately, I found some beautiful, dried magnolia leaves that perfectly matched the dusty brown color of his uniform. It was such a sad painting and exactly captured the horror and futility of war. I tried to do the same with my arrangement,” she says, “but it wasn’t easy.”

Ikebana a highlight

Well-represented among the local invited flower arrangers are many members of Saint Petersburg’s Ikebana International Chapter #65. Dedicated to promoting ikebana, the art of Japanese floral design, the chapter is one of the oldest and best known in the country. Its members exhibit regularly at various venues around the city, including the Imagine Museum, various art galleries, and the chapter’s annual exhibition in Treasure Island.

BARBARA GOSS

Recently, the chapter celebrated the life of Barbara Goss, its oldest, longtime member. At 95, Goss is still exhibiting her stunning arrangements, including at Art in Bloom. Active on the ikebana chapter’s board of directors for many years, her enthusiasm for the art form has never waned. She discovered it while living in Japan in the 1960’s. There, she became involved in the development of Ikebana International, whose motto is “Friendship Through Flowers.” She served as Vice President in charge of developing ikebana chapters worldwide. Among those was Chapter 65 in St. Pete, founded in 1962.

“Initially,” she recalls, “it was started by a group of local flower show judges who were curious about ikebana. They wanted to study it, and when I moved to St. Pete in 1964 many began to study with me. Goss, a teacher in the Sogetsu School of ikebana, became involved in the art form during the six years she and her husband, an employee of GE, lived in Tokyo.

“I got into it as a way to make friends,” she remembers, “and a major reason I’ve stayed is because of that. The men and women in our chapter are incredible and worldly. Among our eighty members are retired doctors, lawyers, professors and business owners. We even have a couple of retired ballet dancers!”

Many are also artists in other mediums such as photography, ceramics and painting, she says. "It's our members' passion and commitment to improving the world through flowers," she says, "that has kept the organization so vibrant for more than half a century.

Challenges abound

Certain paintings lend themselves better than others to interpretation with flowers. For obvious reasons, those full of colors like pinks, blues, and yellows are longtime favorites of Art in Bloom designers. As a result, several such paintings, such as Robert Henri’s Village Girl, have repeatedly been part of the event. Of interest, though, is how differently, from year to year, designers can interpret the same painting.

Art in Bloom matches floral arrangements with paintings and other works of art.

One devoted attendee of AIB has noted that as she strolls through the exhibition, she hears many different reactions to the designers’ interpretations. “If you stand by an arrangement long enough,” she says, “you will hear some people who say they love the floral interpretation and others who definitely do not. The public is quite opinionated about the skills of the designers!” But one of the wonderful things about Art in Bloom, she says, “is that it forces people to really look at the artworks. When you pause in front of a floral arrangement and take time to compare it to the work that inspired it, you begin to see the art with new eyes - and appreciate it in much more detail.”

Cassie Osterloth, owner of Wonderland Floral Art in St. Pete has exhibited at AIB every year except one. She’s known for her large arrangements using many different kinds of flowers. “There is such a wide variety to choose from,” she says. Some flowers are delicate and ethereal, others dense and opulent. Each, she feels, conveys a different mood. “One year,” she remembers, “my painting had a storm rolling in over mountains. I chose spiky, blue thistle and silver- grey eucalyptus leaves to replicate those angry looking, rain-filled clouds.”

Noting its popularity, many art museums around the country also now hold Art in Bloom exhibitions. Staging them has its challenges, especially for the designers. Keeping their arrangements well-hydrated is of greatest concern. “We have to keep them looking fresh throughout all four days of the exhibition,” one arranger says. “No one wants to look at dead flowers!” She goes every morning before the museum opens to check on hers. “I also try to use flowers I know are more long lasting than others. You can’t lose with carnations, lilies, and chrysanthemums, but roses and hydrangeas always present a challenge. They’re water hogs!”

Janine Ducoin-Arnold shows her ikebana work to museum visitors.

Carol Lucia, a nationally renowned flower show judge and longtime member of the Garden Club of St. Petersburg, remembers well the first Art in Bloom at the MFA. She was instrumental in organizing it. “We had flowers everywhere in the museum, even in the garden courtyard,” she says. This year, continuing the tradition, more than 50 arrangements will be placed throughout the galleries, some created by newly invited floral arrangers whose artistry has never before been seen at Art in Bloom. The overall effect promises to be stunning, proving yet again why year after year this is the MFA’s most popular event. Go early – and prepare for a visual floral feast!

The Art of Ikebana

The cycle of life - yesterday, today, and tomorrow - is represented in ikebana by the use of all phases of floral life, from buds to demise. Shocking for newcomers can be the sight of a Japanese master stripping away all the leaves and flowers on a branch of lilies, leaving only one unopened bud as the focal point of an arrangement. “It’s about promise,” he says, “about the imminent birth of something beautiful.”

Good arrangements can also tell a story. The positioning of two flowers nodding toward each other may suggest a mother-child relationship, or that of two lovers. In addition, an ikebana arrangement often indicates the direction of the wind. It’s never static. There’ s movement in it and plenty of negative space. “We like to say there must be room for the birds to fly through it,“ practitioners comment. Above all, students learn, “it must be alive!” Indeed, the term ikebana translates to “living flowers.”

Flower arranging is also a mixture of natural and unnatural. While Mother Nature has produced the floral materials, the hand of the arranger is always visible. Often a branch has been deliberately curved by the designer, or some of the leaves stripped away to better show the shape of a stem. Tropical flowers from South America may be positioned next to evergreen greenery from New England — something that would never occur in nature. As artists, flower arrangers have free reign to create in many unusual ways.

If You Go

Art in Bloom will be held March 16-19 at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg. Viewing of floral arrangements included with museum admission. Check museum website for hours. For tickets to the Flowers After Hours “Bourbon and Bubbles” event in the galleries on Thursday, March 16, 6:30-8:30 p.m., and “Living Floral,” the luncheon at the Vinoy Renaissance Resort, Friday, March 17, 10:30 a.m., please visit www.stuartsociety.org. “Conversations with the Designers”, Sunday, March 19, 2-4 p.m., is included with museum admission.