Pluviculture

Pluviculture was conceived during my time at Sweet Violets Flower Shop. It was hydrangea season, and with every stem added to a bouquet, a small handful of floral clouds descended to the tiled floor. Sculpting is a necessary part of floristry, rarely does a bloom come perfectly ready for a bouquet. However the discarded bits and bobs still looked beautiful to me, and I thought there must be a way to use them.

Their shapes reminded me of fluffy clouds, and I thought their short life span did as well, and from that came the idea to sculpt a cloud out of hydrangea flowers. I collected many from the floor, and ordered backups from Kelli that I never ended up using. I used chicken wire as the base, and included a programmable coloured LED strip inside to illuminate the cloud from within, deepening the cloudlike illusion. I originally wanted to program it to react to soundscapes like a calm summer day or a thunderstorm, with coloured moods to match each setting and reactive flashing for a lightning effect. However, I was limited mostly in budget and somewhat in time.

Overall I was most pleased with the details. There is a prismatic effect from the light, particularly on the white setting, filtering through the petals of the hydrangea to create tiny rainbows piercing through the dark. I love that my cloud made it’s own rainbows. It also tended to shed, creating an almost rain like effect, and highlighting the ephemeral nature of the sculpture.

This sculpture ended up accidentally embodying itself, a sort of art ouroboros, as I almost immediately upon completing this project was offered a contract with the Ministry of the Environment. I never really wanted to leave floristry, Sweet Violets was my dream job and the happiest I have ever been working, however I had started to suffer severe health issues and was worried I would need the health benefits and ability to take time off without hurting my team. The Ministry job landed in my lap, strangely while I was working at my Tarot job, and it felt at the time that I needed to take the opportunity.

This project is so bittersweet because it reflects how my personal life has often bloomed in an ephemeral way, creating moments of profound happiness and beauty that are destined to dissolve into dust and return to where they came from. Furthermore, the art gallery where this showing took place, Lalanai Jennings Contemporary Art, closed it’s doors and shut down the gallery forever a few months after Pluviculture was installed. Currently, the space is now the home of Sugo Mercato, an italian takeout deli.

In so many ways my art often ends up being a love letter to something I don’t yet know I am about to say goodbye to. This project was the most personally profound experience of that, and was unintentionally the most poignant installation I could have done on ephemerality.