Winter Floral Project: Silk Flowers and The Uncanny

​I've casually worked through the winter on my floral project in part to stay active, part for study, part for conversation, experiment, and community. At the core is a pedagogical belief that activity and practice make the practicioner; the person becomes through their engagement and activity.

Although I can make a list of what this work has inspired in me - new plant interests, ideas on "ways of being" in the garden, an extensive development of the vocabulary to speak of floral art, etc - perhaps most strongly is a freshly ordered sense of nature and its duration. For three months now I've had cut
material at my fingertips dialy. From the white Lisanthus I used at Christmas, through the post-holiday coniferous greens, the Quince branches gifted by Ferncroft, my first Ranunculus, and the harvesting of my own branches, Spiraea to Lilac - each day brings some change or motion as buds swell, open, brown, and fall.

And so this morning when I caught this silk bouquet out of the corner of my eye, an uncanny terror bloomed. Its only just this morning that I recognized its never changed.