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The Oklahoma City Museum of Art brought in local florists to show off its art collections and exhibits with art-inspired floral displays during the recent Art in Bloom weekend.
It was the perfect spring event and drew about 2,500 visitors to the museum from Friday through Sunday to enjoy the fresh-cut floral arrangements and a weekend of related programming. The programming included Bubbles & Blooms – a Friday night party with drinks, dancing and more.
Madeline’s Flower Shop received Art in Bloom’s People’s Choice Award for the work that its designers, Lenzee Bilke and Lacee Bilke, did to create “Looking Across America,” a sculpture of a woman using flowers, foliage and vegetation across the United States, its description stated. The work used the “Picturing America: Nature & Nostalgia” gallery as its inspiration and included strawflowers, sunflowers, pampas grass, cotton, hydrangeas and more to complete the look.
Winning the President’s Choice Award was the floral shop A Date with Iris for the work that its designers, Kris Balaban and Amy Downes, did as they took inspiration from the museum’s current exhibit “Magnificent Beauty: Georgia O’Keefe and the Art of the Flower.” They used white calla lilies, a theme often seen in O’Keefe’s work, and dark purple bearded irises.
O’Keefe’s “paintings and photographs are about the beauty of the flowers themselves,” Downes said.
Downes said they love events that involve the arts community.
“We are creative people. And we’re in the arts ourselves. And so it’s just nice to get out here and be among other florists,” she said. “It’s just exciting to have all these pieces to inspire you and help you create something really beautiful.”
I also loved seeing the Curbside Chronicle’s tall and framed sculpture inspired by Kehinde Wiley’s floral background in the artist’s large-scale work “Jacob de Graeff” in the Portraiture Gallery.
The team included Curbside Chronicle managers Kristi Colbert and other designers Corey Russell, Danny Watson, Jason Dugan, Marsha Walker, D’Metryus Freeman, Michal Long, Rhonda Gilcrease, Kevin Isaccs and Mary Hall. Colbert told me that she has worked for Curbside for about three years – since she unexpectedly found herself divorced and homeless – and became the manager of the store about a year ago. She went through design school and marvels at how she reinvented herself.
“That’s a crazy thing at 50 years old,” she said, standing in front of the blue, yellow and green work of blue hydrangeas, smilax greenery, dandelions, anemone, roses and amaranths.
As owner of Okie Floral Co., Christina McGuire works all over the state. She completed different floral arrangements for both Art in Bloom at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and the separate event of the same name at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa the week before. She and designer Brian Minihan took the colors from Dale Chihuly’s “Persian Ceiling” to create their colorful arrangement in Oklahoma City.
McGuire said she loves the event’s creativity.
“Just finding inspiration from somebody else’s art in trying to make my own art and make it match up. That’s just what I love,” she said.
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