Piper Smith
The Way of Flowers

The Way of Flowers

I never wanted a garden; the work felt like a chore. I preferred Art to weeding, coloring with my two favorite crayons: brick red and forest green. I drew flowers on blank paper and “planted” them on my bedroom walls. They weren’t always pretty—some were angry, sad, or dying—but they spoke to me. My current “weed-free” garden grows directly from that early preference for imagination over nature’s demands

During the stillness of the pandemic, I rediscovered flowers through grocery deliveries. Photographing them became both an escape and a meditation. I experimented with color, light, and composition much as I once did with those two crayons. Printing and arranging these photographs in my studio echoed the joy of filling my childhood walls. Soon I began to see them not only as flat images but as objects: a bloom in a clock’s round face, a stem balanced on a candlestick, a flower suspended in a cloud.

The magic is imagining a flower in the mind’s eye—the thrill of beginning. The discipline is shaping it into form: choosing the flower, the container, the feeling to convey. “The Way of Flowers” explores my ongoing fascination with the expressive potential of a garden, a connection that traces directly back to my childhood crayon drawings.