Florists Create Art With Exhibit At Driehaus Museum
Installation by Angelica Rivera Varela, Semillas Plant Studio, Addie Nickerson’s Room. PHOTO BY BY BRIAN GRIFFIN.
Inside the rooms of a renovated mansion in the city’s River North neighborhood, floral designs created by florists of color are displayed as part of an exhibit that takes inspiration from tiffany glass and the rooms where the installations are located.
Glass to Garden: Tiffany Inspired Floral Designs exhibit is a collaboration between Asrai Garden founder Elizabeth Cronin and Driehaus Museum Executive Director Lisa Keys. Keys reached out to Cronin and asked if she would be interested in doing a project at the Driehaus Museum.
“I thought it would be really fun. This mansion is so old and so ornate and so historic, and I really wanted to imagine what it would be like to bring really modern artists into the museum,” Cronin said.
Cronin chose artists she knew from the floral world. One of the artists, worked at Asrai Gardens, before she opened her own floral studio. All of the floral designers have been running their own floral businesses for less than four years. Cronin wanted to bring young, new modern artists into the mansion.
Cronin wanted the work to be in stark contrast to what the Driehaus Museum is and what people normally expect to see in the mansion. Looking at the exhibit, she believes the artists achieved her desires with their work.
Chicago artist and florist John Pendleton from Planks & Pistils created an installation for Samuel Mayo Nickerson’s room. Nickerson was the owner of the home where the Driehaus Museum is located. Pendleton wanted to create a piece for the exhibit because he is exploring more permanent work. Given the temporal nature of floral design, he is trying to do more permanent pieces. For his piece, he did research to inform his design. Pendleton used wheat because Nickerson got his financial start in distilling and used lunaria, also called the money plant, because Nickerson was wealthy. It took 50 to 60 hours for Pendleton to create the piece.
“The challenge was to draw from the Tiffany vase and lamp. My lamp is the pomegranate lamp, that’s why we have the wave of all the pomegranates,” Pendleton said, adding that he pulled colors from the lamp and the vase.
Putting his personal touch on the piece, Pendleton also steam bent wood to make it look like waves and made the base of the piece look like a wave brush. There’s a little bit of Pendleton, a little bit of Nickerson and a little bit of the Tiffany glass all in the piece. Pendleton added that it is one of his favorite pieces that he has ever created, every time he comes back to it, he likes it.
The other artists include Angelica Rivera Varela from Semillas Plant Studio: Taylor Amilas Bates from Dusk Lily Floral; and Serena Madrigal from Espinas.
The exhibit runs through Jan. 7, 2024. The Driehaus Museum is located at 40 E. Erie St. For more information about the Driehaus Museum, visit www.driehausmuseum.org.
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