Cecelia Webber's Flowers Made Of Nude Bodies

I saw this on HuffingtonPost.com. It's pretty fun - people, naked people, colorized, grouped and arranged to look like flowers.

From the interview posted:

The models up until this point in time have all been volunteers. I've had a lot of people offer to pose for my pieces spontaneously. This month will actually mark the first in which I actively recruit models, and I'm going for a mix of different ages, body types, and ethnicities. [Our] culture can be very youth-centric and airbrushed, and I'm interested in portraying a much broader picture. I also appear as the model in a great deal of my artwork; I spent the first two years making this art with a self-timer on a little point and shoot digital camera I rigged up using the hanger bar in my closet.

It should be some great inspiration for my photoshop class I teach.

I like that as plants and with colors - the human bodies become like anything else in nature - natural. The context of sexuality has been removed.

Ikebana

I got to looking into Ikebana and found a gallery with monumental Ikebana "Sogetsu" pieces. They are awesome. I love the Japanese aesthetic.

It's exiting to see how the Japanese artists have found a way to mesh their traditions with modernism. These two remind me of what Petah Coyne and others are doing with plants and other things - from the The 85th Sogetsu Ikebana Exhibition at Shinjuku Takashimaya Department Store, November 2003:




Other Exs:


The 90th Sogetsu Annual Exhibition “Flowering Smile” at the Nihombashi Takashimaya Department Store, Tokyo, November 2008.
Materials: Black bamboo, bamboo, Japanese hemlock, Japanese persimmon with moss
Container: Iron container


Akane's bamboo installation for the 150 Anniversary of Japan-France Relations Celebration Art Exhibition “VIVRE - Akane Teshigahara + Pierre-Gilles Delorme” at the Sogetsu Plaza, Tokyo, September 2008.


Akane's installation at Shinjuku Takashimaya Department store, Tokyo, March 2008.


Yamamoto Yasuro Ceramic Show, Tsuta(ivy) salon, March 5-9, 2003. Iemoto Akane Teshigahara created a space-ikebana-ceramic collaboration.

I don't know if the stores sponsor/underwrite the artists or just provide a venue. I would expect that the Sogetsu would draw visitors and shoppers. They would certainly enhance/improve the stores environment. While I'm sure that the stores advertise in the usual American way as well, these are more fun, and would be a better use of money spent (IMO) if the stores do indeed help with the costs.

Hitsujiyama Park in Chichibu, Japan

Moss Phlox in bloom...

Herbarium Amoris

I was surfing around and found The Human Flower Project and this post in particular which is about an exhibition of flower photography by Edvard Koinberg - Herbarium Amoris - a tribute to Carl Linnaeus of Sweden (whose 300th birthday was last year).

Go to this site - to see more of his photos.
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Aquilegia
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This photo was my favorite. It seemed less predictable - more free or something than most of the photos. Some of them reminded me of botanical drawings - in their subject and composition. Lovely - but a bit stiff.