Fall Floral Whispering

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” Emily Brontë

I adore fall! All the glorious colour, texture, feeling and observing mother nature at work. I especially love yielding the floral reminisces of this season and witnessing other’s spin their floral magic too!

And so too goes for the Southern Hemisphereians amongst us, as you enter Spring. The joy in witnessing the first bulbs appear and the knowingness that warmer weather is near!

I purchased a lovely dried wreath from local Toronto avant-garde floral artist GUNNER AKA Jaime McCuaig. I felt immediate connection with the artist and decided to discover more about Jamie and her work . As many of you know, I am big on supporting local businesses and their creators in any way I can. All wreath proceeds went toward @esn.to.4real + native_womans_resource_centre .

Jaime creates work that is bound to the temporal and fleeting nature of her primary materials, plants and flowers. With a focus on impermanence, sculpting living matter into forms specific to season, time and place. Her style and form is recognized as avant-garde, abandoning the rules and traditional expectations of western floristry.

These sculptures are evocative of particular sentiments through the study of colour, texture, scent and scale. Whether deconstructed or left to decompose, McCuaig’s work, like a performance, exists in original form for only a brief moment in time.

Inspired by her education in film, she is constantly informed by the study of composition and deliberate use of negative space. Coupled with a keen interest in ikebana, the arrangement of her materials becomes the practice through which communication occurs. The manipulation of living productsproduct commands an astute awareness of our environment and natural world without having to use sound or words.

Jaime’s work has been commissioned by the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Gardiner Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has also been published in ELLE, SLIMI, Design Files, CBC Arts, and the Globe and Mail. Gah! I invite you to discover this raising talent for yourself, check out her work on Instagram @j_aime.

If you follow along on instagram you would have seen I was captivated by the work of Moment Flora floral style on my recent trip to beautiful @mjolkshop. Reiko Machiyama’s, AKA Moment Flora,  style can be described as Kado / Ikebana / Avant Garde with a unique and absolutely adorable twist. 

Reiko Machiyama was Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan and grew up surrounded by art, design, fashion, music, movies, food, and culture. She studied KADO (Practice way of flower) and Japanese Ikebana flower arrangement (trained by her aunt who is an Ikebana master) since an early age. At the age of 18 Reiko moved to Canada and has been a proud Torontonian for over 20 years now. 

She is at her happiest meditative state when immersed in nature and her floral work. “A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.” This simple yet so meaningful sentiment is at the core of her work. 

Reiko created her own unique floral language specialising in styling flowers as interior perspectives for living and working spaces. Respecting the Ikebana's art of line and balance, she has cast aside the many rules and manners from her training to rebuild her own artistic approach that is far more genuine to her.

Bringing the inspiration home

I bought this inspiration home, along with a wee dried Posy from The Wanderly and set about revamping my beautiful centre table ceramic travel treasure / memento. Picked up from @hawkinsnewyork, during last summer's trip to the beautiful Catskills, in New York State.

Needless to say, witnessing all this botanical creativity always brings me enormous joy and inspiration! Which has been harnessed and implemented in the making of my ‘Blurred Lines’ and ‘Paper Cuts’ series’.

I’m now taking this new investment of inspiration back to the studio with me … where I’ll soon be embarking on the creation of a new series (or two) for a couple of new Gallery representatives and art initiatives. More on that to come!