Just when I thought that spring would never come, the forsythia and daffodils are out, and tender green leaves are beginning to sprout from the long, bare branches. However, nothing signals the change of the season like Featherstone Center for the Arts’ annual “Art of Flowers” exhibition.
The show is a longstanding tradition that started with Holly Alaimo when she owned Dragonfly Gallery, where she hosted a flower show every Mother’s Day. Featherstone CEO Ann Smith notes, “When Holly sold her gallery, the new owners did not wish to continue the tradition, so Featherstone asked her to continue by curating the ‘Art of Flowers Show’ at Featherstone in May 2011, which she did through May 2019.” In its 29th year, Featherstone continues the tradition, with an opening the Sunday before Mother’s Day.
One hundred thirty artists have filled the Francine Kelly Gallery with flowers and buds in every shape, size, medium, and expression, from realism to abstraction, photography to ceramics, and sea glass to metal.
Although the show bursts with color, it begins quietly with predominantly black-and-white works on either side of the narrow entryway. David Ferguson’s “Once Upon a Waltz” is a captivating pen-and-watercolor piece. We gaze directly down from high above at a color rendering of a couple dancing arm in arm. Every square inch around them is filled with an intricately inked pattern of flowers that locks the partners in place.
The bright white budding branches, berries, and mushrooms surrounding a startling animal skull against a velvety black background in Kaylee Haase’s “Stillness in Bloom” recall 17th century Dutch Vanitas still life paintings. Like these antecedents, Haase’s acrylic on wood illustrates the passage of time from what blooms to what dies.
Caroline Thornton is one of many artists who zoom in close to their subject. The shiny, tiny droplets of water on the petals of her single flower in “Black and White Bloom” make the image shimmer.
Maria Eduarda Leoncio skillfully fashions her intricately detailed flat sculpture, “Flower Bomb,” from a single black wire, distilling the image of a blossom to its most essential form.
Brian Abbott Jr.’s “Terraform No. 2” is simultaneously immense, towering high above us, and delicate and spare. The celestial, slim, stainless steel sculpture speaks to its title, defined as transforming a planet or moon to resemble the Earth so that it can support human life.
Saundra LaBell’s humorous mixed-media “Floral Tick” carts around a bursting bouquet on its back and fabric-wrapped wire legs. Marie Zaccagnini also uses wire to create a handsome necklace depicting rosebuds. The buds in Ivry Russillo’s necklace bring a smile as they encircle a pig’s protruding countenance. Lucinda Sheldon uses enamel not to create jewelry, but rather to decorate the top of her small “Flower Box,” constructed from wood, enamel, and vintage glass.
Scott Bliss uses bits of sea glass in “Reflections of Spring.” The still life of three “vases,” made from flat stones, sits on a shelf that looks like driftwood, enhancing the sense that he has created his composition from nature’s bounty.
Ceramics abound. Tatiane Marcelino accents her untitled white multi-petaled blossom with deep purple glazes, drawing attention to its three-dimensionality. The outline of Martha’s Vineyard sits in the center of Helayne Cohen’s cream-glazed oval dish, enticingly embossed with a lovely floral pattern.
There are several flower-adorned portraits. Janice Frame creates a floral vision in “African Grace.” A magnificent headdress of pink, lavender, and purple petals sits resplendently on a regal woman, framing her steady stare that reaches our soul. Ann DuCharme paints a floral crown on top of a woman in a somber black-and-white archival photograph in “Mourning Flora,” evoking reverence for an ancestor who has passed. Mikey Rottman’s arresting mixed-media abstract painting, “Girl with Flowers,” carries whiffs of Matisse and Picasso. Jane Foster Thame uses copper in her mixed-media portrait “Feeling Loved.” The red-high-heeled woman in a short midnight-blue dress holds a copper vase like a wedding bouquet, and the copper springs for her hair add a bounce to her smile. Kate Feiffer’s pen-and-ink-on-gouache “Is That an Assalea?” will bring a laugh. A nude woman, with her back to us, stands amid a field of flowers, with a giant one strategically located in front of her bottom.
Marie-Louise Rouff masterfully uses watercolor in “Amaryllis Flower” to capture the plant’s amazing vivacity and ability to seemingly grow before our eyes. Barbara Reynolds brings an appealing painterly feel to “Peony Bouquet” by printing her photograph of the glorious blossoms on canvas.
Fabric and textiles also appear in the show. Marie Wise’s textile cross-stitch still life “Spring Florals” beckons us to look closer at her delicate needlework. Marilyn H. Vukota’s floral-adorned, hip-hugger bell-bottom jeans recall an era when men’s hair was long and the Grateful Dead ruled the airwaves.
There are also two stunning quilts. Twelve kaleidoscopic buds burst out in full bloom in Wendy Nierenberg’s “Cactus Rose.” And the overlapping petals in Charlotte Cole’s enormous “Floating Flowers,” which sits behind the desk just outside the gallery, seem to shift before our eyes as we exit the exhibition to head up to the accompanying Garden Gate children’s exhibit in the Schule Chapel Gallery.
“Spring has sprung. Summer is here,” Smith enthuses. “Come to Featherstone. In addition to the shows, we have great classes. Come find your inner artist.”
“The Art of Flowers: Wonderfully Floral” is open daily (except Memorial Day), noon to 4 pm, through May 25. For more information, visit featherstoneart.org/galleryshows.html.
