This was so much to do! After assisting with installing an exhibition, I would also make flower arrangements for the galleries. We would always install the week before, and finish by Friday. The Saturday morning before an opening reception I would drive around hunting for wildflowers with my dog and/or friend-anywhere between river road and Mississippi, then return, make arrangements, and run home for a quick costume change before the exhibition began. Then the work of discussing paintings with everyone for two hours straight, which I loved.
When I moved back to New Orleans after completing graduate school, I taught many classes at the Academy, worked as an exhibition preparator and assisted with installing the monthly art exhibitions. Here I am pictured creating flower arrangement, which I also did monthly as part of our process for creating a welcoming environment at art exhibitions. My maternal grandmother, Miek Laan made the arrangements when I was younger and I would tag along and help her as a child.
I used a special vase pictured here-it was designed by my father and hand blown at the New Orleans School of glassworks in the arts district. The arrangements I made would combine wildflowers I gathered the morning of the event combined with more traditional flower shop flowers. We would display the arrangement in the entrance hall near the front stairs to welcome art enthusiasts into the exhibitions.
