Welcome to the Flower Shop first catalogue of 2022 with a small selection of flowers.
Please do not hesitate to ask questions, if you have any.
London Toile de Jouy wallpaper.
Pollinators in action wallpaper
The Flower Shop’s mission is to outlast the limited lifespan of a cut (or uncut) flower. We offer you the joy of spring throughout the cold winters and beyond.
The flower shop consists of a “flower arrangement”, (mixed media on cotton paper), displayed in a custom-made acrylic cover (aka vase), bespoke wallpapers and objects (aka pollinators), and a series of Interiors and Landscapes, Mixed media on Canvas.
Two designs of wallpaper are part of the work, one is designed based in the “Toile de Jouy” using photographs I took during the 2020 lockdown, where the traffic and pollution was reduced to a minimum, and the city was taken over by pedestrians and by families and children on their bicycles, allowing the rebirth of nature. The Toile de Jouy is a traditional design usually depicting mostly pastoral scenes. Instead of the countryside, I am using the cities without traffic images (that have been taken over by transportation since the invention of the automobile) to illustrate that, with the polluters gone, they are once again a space for people to enjoy and nature to be reborn. A second motif, displays the Pollinators in full action, helping spread the seeds of life to create more beauty. As with everything, they are colorful cheerful, and threatening and dangerous, as nothing is totally good or totally bad (not considering extremes).
The flower Shop is a body of work I started during the first lockdown in 2020. At the time I was living in London, an overly centralized, polluted, and crowded city, yet also very beautiful full of history and events. As I lived in the center, I witnessed the
change the city went through during the lockdown. We biked around the city, without traffic, families with their children were enjoying a place that once before was owned by the car and public transport.
The view of the city was magnificent, the lack of advertising and other polluters allowed the very few of us to witness her beauty.
It has been difficult, ups and downs. But there was also the good side, the dolphins swimming back into the Venice canals, the pollution levels decreasing, and the smells of the flowers becoming more prominent. The office workers managed to work from home, all those hours wasted transporting in overly crowded public transport were put to a better use. Several left the big cities to settle in smaller towns and bigger houses with green areas, fomenting decentralization, and growth in other forgotten towns, where due to the small population, not many were able to start a business there, a restaurant, a convenience store, a theater, or an art gallery or whatever you have in mind…
The flower shop creates a space that allows you to revisit the speed of time we are living, the frenetic hysteria, the disparity and disproportionality in the way our resources were divided, priority and admirations, trust, and true needs, and most of all, to have a beautiful flower arrangement lasting (almost) forever.
Welcome to my studio, where the magic happens, the place that holds my struggles, endless experimentation, failures and some success, more of the first than the second.
This is, by far, the biggest studio I have ever had. At the time of writing, I have been working from here for a year, and there is still so much organization to be done, still, it is a great space, with a large window facing the Spree River.
A short story about the countries I have lived and the studios I had.
In London, my second studio was about a quarter of the size of this one, and the previous one was probably slightly bigger than my rug (the large one pictured). Both were in a building where many other artists and photographers and theater stage designers had their workspace. It was lovely to run into people, that time when we were not afraid of social contact, have a chat or small talk. I must admit I wasn’t truly myself at the time, as it has taken me years to recover from a burnout.
While I was living in Dallas, I had a home studio in my flat(s), in 7 years I moved 5 times, the size of a standard room. At that time, I was working mostly digital, as it was a time of my life I was living “in transit” and everything I was doing was rootless, so I could pack my belongings in a suitcase and a hard drive and leave in no time. I was inventing my own space where I could bring my memories, because early in life I realized, the spaces are meaningless without the experience.
Uruguay was the country where I spent most of my life, and I moved just 4 times in 20 years, which sounds like a record. My first studios were wherever I found a surface to work, mostly tables and easels in Art School. By the time I finished University I managed to have my own studio, it was an amazing place, 30m2 rectangular shape, proportionated like a bus, long and skinny. It had an outdoor terrace where we had many gatherings with friends. It was a beautiful time, because I was in my 20s, full of energy and dreams and ambition.
When I was living in Madrid, I was a school aged girl, and I had a round table my mother painted green with a big colorful flower in the middle. I would spend hours sitting at my table lost in my histories. I would draw a group of characters, “Las Sajonas” I am not sure where I learned about them. They were a group of very strong women, long and skinny and mostly always facing sideways, some sort of Amazonians living in the 80s. It was so much fun.
I also attended art classes, my teacher was a woman, the mother of one of my classmates. She was beautiful and soft and made me draw the same plant over and over, until one day, out of boredom, I started doing whatever I wanted with the image, and that day I was promoted to oil painting. My dad gave me some money and off I went to the store to buy a little canvas and a brush and oil. In the class I made my first oil on canvas, and of course, my mom still has it.
Flo(w)(r)es
Mixed media on canvas
Total dimensions 75x90cm
Previous page, A lovely summer picnic and we all smile. Mixed media on canvas with a Plate.
Total dimensions 50x60cm
Background paper “The Corner Garden”
My indoor garden(s)
I must admit my finger is light green, but I still love to be surrounded by plants and flowers, and I do try my best to make them feel comfortable and grow happy. Flowers brings me joy. Flowers and I, we go a long way back.
I grow up in Madrid, even if the weather is dry over there, there are big parks and flowers grow in every corner, most of time the balconies are full of pots with red geraniums and there are carnations everywhere. In the time I lived in the Americas, I missed flowers deeply. Montevideo is a grey city, it has trees, which is very good, but less flowers in general, and they like to measure the growth in m2 of concrete, therefore, every new square, plaza, public space, is made out of concrete, very grey, they believe progressive means lots of concrete and gardens are too much work, so, only the very rich or the
poor ones who live on the outskirts of the city have the joy of living around greenery and some color. In the US you don’t see many flowers either, maybe some overly manicured gardens in posh areas and, sometimes, at the side of the highways some wildflowers grow in the grass and long monochromatic lines guide your way, but this beauty I was just able to observe once, in 7 (long) years.
And when I moved to London, I landed in flower heaven. In every corner a flower shop, in the parks, in every little space people find in their homes to make a small garden, in their windows, house boats. The variety in the local growth is fabulous, and they take full advantage of it, they are everywhere, and that is the kind of invasion you want, colors and perfumes and shapes and sizes, all different living together.
That’s me telling stories to people who asked questions during the first flower shop pop up exhibition.
On show, Larger Flowers than theVase and Vase with golden frame and pollinators wallpaper.
Left: Flowers in 2 Vases in a Vase. Framed with Toile de Jouy wallpaper placed over Pollinator’s wallpaper. Total dimensions 65x65 cm
On this page,
Top left: The garden is yawning. Framed with collage background. Total dimensions 35x45 cm
Top right: The Wild Garden. Framed with collage background. Total dimensions 35x45 cm.
Bottom left little flowers, paper collages inside a plastic dome.
The wallpaper was designed to be exactly that, a wallpaper, but it might not be possible to stick it to the wall, in that case, it is attached to panels and hung from the wall, and the “vase” is placed on it and held in place with transparent pins. Small flowers are also placed in the panels along with a few pollinators to help spread seeds of life.
“F01-21-12”
Mixed media on paper over collage with dark wood frame 21x27 cm - 63x63 cm framed - Berlin 2021
“F01-21-04”
Mixed media on paper over collage with dark wood frame 21x27 cm - 63x63 c
to be hang of the wall 20cm London 2020
