Craft & Competition at the Philadelphia Flower Show

When is the last time you pushed yourself outside of your comfort zone creatively?

The Flower Show did that for me. Blooming since 1829, the PHS Philadelphia Flower Show is the largest and longest running horticulture show in the United States. I attended for the first time in 2022, and have entered the Botanical Jewelry and Photography artistic classes for the last two years.

2023 Prompt: Create rose-colored sunglasses using dried botanical materials.

2024 Prompts:

1. Submit a triptych with flowers of the same color, species or stage in the plant life cycle.

2. Create a choker using six or more botanical materials from this list — acorn, raffia, crepe myrtle, midollino, onion, eucalyptus, pea, kiwi vine, pumpkin seed, mustard seed, fennel seed and pine.

Because I’m a fan of intention and understated drama, the necklace also has a message in morse code. Guess what it says…

The initial allure to enter was the prompts for each Botanical Arts category. I love a good theme to challenge myself creatively. After the first year, the lure grew due to the limitation of using dried plant materials. Starting my journey as botanical designer, I only used living plants. This shift in source material and imagination allowed me to see the beauty in often overlooked, and even discarded, things like onion skin.

I quickly noticed that white women ages 55+ were the majority, and the assumptions that I worked for the Philadelphia Convention Center confirmed that was the norm. All the more reason for me to be showing jewelry in the artistic classes - and winning. But I noticed those ribbons didn’t mean much to me. It got me wondering, can love and competition coexist?

My love is for the craft. My reward as an artist is in presence of the viewer and the resonance of the message. At the Flower Show, the stack ranking and comment cards from the judges influences the perception. That made me feel a way. It reduced the passion and purpose to physical content for critique and consumption. What moves me is seeing people reconnect to nature, and start to look at the world around us with more appreciation for its beauty and offerings.

Whether it’s mustard seeds or morse code, don’t miss the message.