In this week’s paper, I wrote about Bouquet XI, an installation of flowers designed to make you sneeze, at the Henry Art Gallery. The living piece, which gets refreshed every 10 days in a complicated dance involving two ladders and three people, is intended to evoke the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All the plants are native to the contested lands in and around Israel, and several have strong allergenic properties.
Bouquet XI is the brainchild of a Dutch artist named Willem de Rooij. But he needs a local florist to build and maintain it. At the Jewish Museum in New York last year, that florist was Bella Meyer. In Seattle, it’s Nisha Kelen. Kelen, whose own company is called Fleurish, talked with me about being the craftswoman behind the artist.
So how were you chosen for such a strange project in the first place?
Basically, I’ve had a longstanding relationship with the Henry. I’ve done their annual gala event for the last five years. I think as a byproduct of that, they considered me as an option.
Is it different designing for “art standards”? Is the gala different from, say, a wedding, or are they both just clients?
Ironically, it’s a lot less maintenance than doing a wedding, because you’re not holding somebody’s hand for up to a year. Let me say this: I collaborate with a team of people for the Henry, so they’re the ones conceptualizing the theme of the event, and the artist they’re highlighting that year is the overall driving force for the aesthetic and feel of the night—it goes back to the artist’s work. It’s super fun, and what I’m doing is just a small decorative accent. It’s a centerpiece that goes hand-in-hand with the linens and the chairs and the lighting, so it’s not focal, like [Bouquet XI] is.
Actually, I thought this was going to be a lot more stressful, but it’s really, really fun. I’m going to change it out today.
How often do you change it?
I’m doing it on a 10-day rotation. We’re just trying to be as sensitive as we can with the budget. Really, it should be changed out every week, but I’m using product that for the most part is pretty hardy and resilient, so over a 14-week period, it helps cost-wise doing it every 10 days rather than every seven.
I want to hear a little more about the galas. Who have been the artists and what have you made?
Last year it was Ann Hamilton, and the year before that it was Jeffry Mitchell. With him, I’m totally in love with him, so that was easy.
They came to me and said, “Can you do something in woodland chic?” I’ll never forget that, that’s how they described it.
That night, some guys came in lederhosen and lumberjack outfits, and other people were dressed as, like, hunters—but in very elegant hunting costumes. There were a lot of feathers. A lot of faux furs.
They filled the different galleries with huge evergreen trees that were lit. They were artificial but they looked really real, so it felt like you were walking into a forest. Jeffry and Joey Veltkamp drew these life-size figures of bears and raccoons and owls and different critters and creatures, so there were these huge line drawings up on the walls. I think it was wood tables; I don’t even think there were linens. I did these centerpieces that were made out of birch skin. They looked like logs with a lot of fern and moss, and that was the woodland part. The chic part was, I took a white phaleonopsis orchid and nested it there, in contrast to the bark and moss and ferns. I think that was my favorite of the gala installations.
What was the Ann Hamilton gala like?
Oh, super-dreamy, and very tone-on-tone, whites and creams and a lot of fabrics flowing throughout the space. We did white tables with flax-colored linen runners. It felt almost Amish, with these white-wash boxes that had a variety of baby’s breath, not the kind you find at the grocery store but that had these tiny, little, airy, delicate blossoms. It almost had this transparency to it, and there was a lot of candlelight in the room, and uplighting that was gold and ambery. It was really, really, really soft and diaphanous. The whole room felt celestial.
Then this year, it wasn’t a particular artist. It was a tribute to the past and the future. We did a play on hyacinth bulbs and lightbulbs. The hyacinth bulbs were out of water with their roots exposed. And then tables had these glass boxes filled with all different types of light bulbs.
Have you ever worked directly for an artist before?
I’ve never worked for an artist, but a good 15 years ago, I did an installation for, I think, Seattle Asian Art Museum. Each room in the museum had a different florist who did an installation and I did an entire chair covered in roses. It was, like, a dining-room chair made out of wicker, so I was able to wedge the roses into the weave of the chair, and I remember that each one had to be water-tubed, and it was hundreds and hundreds of roses. They were reds and oranges and raspberry tones, and then the color spread to different areas, almost like fabric.
For Bouquet XI, did a museum curator contact you, or how did it work?
I was contacted in the beginning by Luis Croquer, the curator. Probably this was last fall, when they first started speculating whether or not this was actually going to even happen. I know that Luis has had his eye on Willem [de Rooij, the artist] for some time.
What were your marching orders?
I was given a written description of the piece. I was also given some visuals of the piece in New York, and I was given a list that was very long, of different types of flowers and greenery that could be options for the piece, all of which can be found growing natively in the Middle East, more specifically Israel.
What was so funny was that the list was all in botanical names that I couldn’t even pronounce. I wrote them back and said, “Is there any chance you could give me the common names for all of these?” It must have been over a hundred different things. So they did that. And I would say probably 90 percent of everything that’s going into this bouquet, I’ve had to source from different places. Some of it’s coming from Florida, and the other part is coming from California, because the stuff doesn’t grow here.
For example, olive branches and eucalyptus and actual dates on the vine, and different kinds of palm leaves and palm fronds. I’ve had to have that shipped in every week now.
And I had to go through four rounds of test bouquets before it was approved by the artist.
How did you work that? Did you send images?
Yes. And now, the piece is built on site at the gallery.
Can people watch you doing it?
They can, if they happen to be there. They rope off the area, but if you could stand there and watch.
The logistics are a lot more complicated than just putting together a bouquet that you would load up in a van and deliver. Everything has to be done there, because it’s so big. It’s about 7 feet tall, not from the floor but from the base of the pedestal to the top, and it’s a good 5 to 7 feet wide, and it has 2 different levels of vessels.
We had to build an insert, like a plastic vessel that drops into the ceramic vessel, and then within that, there’s an extension that comes up through the middle of the bottom vessel, and there’s another vessel on top of that. So it’s in two parts.
You don’t see the mechanics of it when the arrangement’s done.
No, you just see a completely white and smooth vase on a completely white and smooth pedestal.
And then each time, when the arrangement is completed, somebody from the staff comes in and repaints the vessel and the pedestal, gives it a fresh coat of white so that it’s not blemished and doesn’t have any water marks on it or anything like that. Because that’s part of the piece—the pedestal and the vessel.
Did you provide the vessel? What were the specifics on what kind of vessel?
I actually did, and the pedestal was built by the Henry, and they built the insert for me.
It’s just a white vessel. There were dimensions he’d specified, but the original piece from New York got damaged in shipping when it was sent out here, and we are on a different budget than New York was on, so I think Willem was able to be flexible with regard to that.
Their arrangement, I think, was even larger and had more product in it, and they were also able to get stuff probably right from Florida and the shipping cost was a lot less than what we’re having to deal with in Washington state.
Talk to me about the allergenic component.
The piece is intended to create a state of discomfort upon entering. To feel uncomfortable and to take notice that your senses are being kind of messed with. I was like, I wonder how this is going to work, but every time I’m in there, I’m itchy, especially with the acacia and the eucalyptus and the cypress I’ve been using, which has this pollen that, when you touch it, it shakes and becomes airborne. I’m not so sensitive to the lilies but certainly a lot of people are. I was wondering about the person at the reception desk, so I was like, “Are you doing okay?” and they were like, “Yeah, I’m taking my Zyrtec.”
It’s super-warm in that room and really dry, so things are moving along in their process of opening more quickly than if they were in a cooler environment. They have A/C and we’ve made adjustments—we put the blinds down on the east wall where there’s a window, and we’ve been putting a little teeny bit of bleach in the water every other day to mitigate any kind of bacterial growth, because 10 days is a long time to not change out the water.
I thought I’d have to go every day, but people at the Henry have been great. They’re on a plan where somebody goes in the morning and somebody goes in the evening. They check the water level and they mist it and make sure that if anything starts to get stinky, they add the bleach.
You remake the art every 10 days—how is it different each time?
As far as the composition, based on the piece done in New York dictated by Willem’s vision, I did have a conversation with the florist who did the one back East. She sent pictures to me and when I saw three ladders and a tarp and all these people walkng around, I was like, “Wow, that’s a big production.” I’d thought it was going to be a one-man show for me. But every time I do it, I have at least two peole with me and we have two ladders.
Taking it apart is actually harder than assembling it. You pull one thing out, and things start to, like, shatter. And it’s slimy. You pull one thing out, and 10 other stems want to come out with it, because it’s crosshatched. So it’s more strategic trying to pull things out delicately one at a time and then rounding it all up and dragging it out.
The insert gets pulled out and a duplicate second insert was built so that we can swap it out because the other one needs to be scrubbed and cleaned and disinfected.
As far as the type of flora, the floral part changes week to week but the main olive and eucalyptus and sand palms and date palms stay pretty constant. This week I’m going to be adding the lilies—they go in every week. I’ve got some yarrow, I have some alium, I have agapanthus—a miniature variety from California, I’ve got some Kangaroo paw, something called eremerus, I have some papyrus grass.
Because the scale is so big, there are little stories that are being told within the piece, so that if you look closer, there are pockets of smaller, more delicate flowers being composed within the larger format. That was something that was really important to Willem.
He was trying to mirror what’s going on in the world. It’s like we have all this conflict and chaos and big things happening in the world, but we shouldn’t forget the smaller moments, and the individuals who are living their lives right in the midst of these huge things.
More specifically, you know, he’s referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For me, this project was even more of an honor because I’ve been to Israel three times, and I’ve traveled from the north to the south and in particular have visited some floral farms there. Israel has a huge floral export thing going on, and my husband is Israeli and we are partners in the business [Fleurish] together. So this project resonated with me.
Does this piece look like one of your own designs at all? How much creative input do you have?
For me as as floral designer, this is counterintuitive to the way I design. There’s a lot going on. There are too many elements for me personally. But I get it. I see different stories going on as you walk around it. He wanted super-dramatic, bold parts, and within that, more delicate, tender moments.
I see big, huge, bold, five-foot-spanning palms that are almost like a shield, and then at the base, I’ll put these small, soft, vulnerable grasses. So you have Israel—you’ve got two stories going on, protecting its people and fighting for its land—and then you’ve got Palestinians doing the same thing. There’s tension in this bouquet.
Has your husband worked with you on it?
He’s helped me do the installation, and yeah, he helped me in terms of looking at different items. I was trying to find as much as I could here so that I wasn’t shipping things from out of state, but that’s been challenging, especially when I’m in need of things that are three to five feet tall.
How many of the plants on the list will you have used by the time this is over?
Oh, not even 10 percent. The list was full of, like, things that I’ve never even heard of. Today I’m looking at my selection and I’m only taking 16 elements. I’m doing a lot of repetition. I need to repeat some stuff so that there’s impact. Otherwise, if it was just one of this and one of that, it would be this huge circus act.
You are designing not just for visual impact but for content, or symbolism. Do you usually do that?
It’s really super-intuitive for me. I mean, I never went to floral design school. I’ve been in this industry for over 30 years. I can’t imagine doing any other type of work. I’m an artist, too, I paint, so I do have a connection to composition and color, but again, all very intuitively, not anything I studied.
But I think there’s a dialogue that goes on between flowers, and I think if you listen to it, they tell you where they want to go.
It’s not like ikebana. That’s more calculated design. I just, I don’t know, it comes more naturally.
I started when I was in the ninth grade. It was my first job in high school. I was in Los Angeles and I didn’t even drive yet. I would walk there from school. And I kept doing it through college even when I got to Seattle. I thought, “This is just a creative outlet, just something to do on the side.” I never stopped doing it but never thought of it as a career.
And then, when I turned 30, I was like, “Oh, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” I opened Fleurish 18 years ago in Madrona, and every day, it’s really fun to come to work. I’m not saying it’s not stressful, but we get to be surrounded by beauty all day long, and it’s different each day, and each season is so explosive.
Does Seattle have a good community of floral artist/designers?
Yeah, really good.
Who do you admire?
There’s a wave of new designers that have just surfaced in Seattle, and the style of design is far more organic than what I tend to do, which is a bit more structural. There’s a woman named McKenzie Powell, whose work I really, really, really love. She’s a freelance designer. It’s more a farm-to-table kind of approach to design. Very asymmetrical and really romantic.
Who else?
Well, I don’t know if he’s still here, but there’s a guy named Kan, who I actually sold my orchid shop to. He’s from Thailand, and he does the most amazing, very labor-intensive weaving of leaves, and he works a lot with orchids. It’s like miniature art sculptures, what he does. You can see images of that on his web site.
So they are two very different styles of floral design and I like both of them very much. Totally two different kinds of brides.
When you work with a bride or a client, I imagine you get plenty of feedback. What’s the feedback from Bouquet XI been like?
I’ve been getting really great feedback on Instagram, but I haven’t spoken to anybody. I did get an email from somebody whose wife is an Ikebana artist, and he was really, really curious, and excited to see that floral was being displayed as art. Because in Ikebana, that’s such a form of art, too, but it’s never been elevated to that level—maybe in smaller communities in the International District where they’ll have shows.
Are there shows of Ikebana in the ID?
There must be.
I’d love to see those. If you hear about any, spread the word!
I will.
What is your husband’s response to Bouquet XI?
When I first got approached, we thought it was a short-term thing, and then when we found out it was for 14 weeks, well, he runs the business side of things, and he was like, “Are you crazy?” But now he’s really happy and supportive.
Is he allergic to the plants?
He’s not allergic. Neither of us have floral allergies, hallelujah.
Or too bad. You can’t get the full power of the piece.
Yeah. Other than the itching on my arms as I work, I haven’t had any allergic response. But at least my coworkers have.
Tell me when you’ll be down there working, in case people want to come and watch.
June 26 at 3 pm—always at 3 pm. July 7, July 15, July 24, and August 4. August 4 is the last time.
The show closes August 16. By that day, the bouquet will probably be pretty ripe. Bring your tissues.
