Stop and smell the flowers:
Bloom N Art returns with color and fragrance

Article from the Harvard Press by Carlene Phillips, March 2022

The sixth annual Bloom N Art, a collaboration between the Garden Club of Harvard and the Bromfield art department, will be held at Fivesparks Sat., March 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sun., March 20, 1 to 4 p.m. Members of the Garden Club are happy that this year visitors will be able to smell the flowers in their arrangements, rather than just see them, as was the case last year when Bloom N Art was a virtual event. Much of the 2021 student artwork that the floral arrangements complemented included a face mask in some iteration because of the ever-present awareness of the pandemic. But this year’s work is more varied and brightly colored.

While the mood around the event feels different from last year, the process for Bloom N Art is the same as it has been since then-president Shirley Boudreau launched the first show. Bromfield art teachers choose selections in a variety of media from among their students, photograph each, and send the pictures to the Garden Club. In the past, middle school students participated, but this year only the high school students of Elizabeth Hoorneman and Cynthia Fontaine are represented.

Meanwhile, the chairs of Bloom N Art, which for the third year are Marijke Vallaeys and AnaMaria Nanra, are receiving names of Garden Club members who want to do an arrangement for the exhibit. Member Deborah Dowson, known in the club as “the matchmaker,” sends out pictures of the artwork and tries to give all arrangers one of their top choices. This year there are 38 students represented in 26 pieces of art; a few pieces have works in the same medium by three or four different students. Some arrangers have chosen to interpret more than one work.

Dowson said she misses having the art of the middle-schoolers, which often had repeating images in different bright colors that the arrangers found fairly easy to capture through shape, color, or mood. This year there are fewer traditional works, like landscape paintings and self- portraits. Instead, there is a large number of digital photography and photo shop pieces and new mediums like Zentangle and styrofoam printing. There is more stoneware than in the past, including a Viking horn that functions as a cell phone speaker, done by Sarah Burns, grade 11. There’s lots of vivid color, and “they’re fun and creative,” said Dowson.

Actually, there are masks and self-portraits in this year’s artwork, but of a very different sort from 2021. Students in Hoorneman’s advanced art class made self-portrait masks in plaster and acrylic paint. The outside of the mask represents the side of themselves they show to the world, and the inside reveals aspects of themselves that are more personal or hidden. There are three of these interesting pieces, and the arrangers who chose them are finding it a challenge to display both sides and to have a floral interpretation that reflects both identities.

Traditionally, member Margaret Murphy runs a workshop where those attending have a chance to brainstorm ideas for containers and flowers they might use to capture their assigned artwork. This year some arrangers said they were at a bit of a loss because they found the digital art so different. “I can’t relate,” said one person. But another responded that it’s great, “because it forces us out of our comfort zone.” Many bemoaned the difficulty of finding blue flowers at this time of year. “I love it,” said Nancy Webber about her Zentangle by Shey Bala, grade 12, “but I’m not going to find flowers—blue ones.”

Phyllis Clawson chose a photo of a brick wall with graffiti and two small faces imposed on it by senior Aidan Long. Clawson said she had picked up a rusted long, shallow pan at the dump that she thought would be perfect for holding water for the birds. Now, she said, it will be ideal as her container. She’ll cluster light green-blue flowers and sprinkle others throughout. Vallaeys has a photoshop face by ninth-grader Jack Lizotte, with wonderful bushy hair and multiple eyes, nose and mouth—looking like a cubist work. She has ideas for the hair at the top of the arrangement and then rows of flowers representing the features.

New member and first-time arranger Shlawna Sikochi was grateful for the workshop to get ideas of what materials she can use. She has a challenging art piece of three different digital photography-light paintings and isn’t sure how she will incorporate them all. One is a shadowy figure with a coral background; for that she’s thinking of colored bear grass and black calla lilies. “All About Silverware”—three panels of images,, each by a different student—will be no problem for Margaret Murphy, who says she has silverware “lying around” that she will use to hold up her flowers. Terri Knoettner is happy to have ended up with probably the most traditional work of all the selections, a landscape painting by ninth-grader Cassidy Fisher.“ I can have fun with this one,” she said.

Arrangers, students, and the general public will find the Bloom N Art exhibit a wonderful reprieve in mid-March—a preview of spring, a time to smell the flowers that are on their way.