Philippa Stevenson: Flowering of artistry a 5-year treasure

Here's a challenge. What would you create if your inspiration were the words "fields invested with purpureal gleams"?

Where would you start if you had to transform the phrase "all her silken flanks with garlands dressed" into an artwork? How about rustling up something to represent "wrinkled with age and drenched with dew" or "the sobbing turmoil of trees"?

It may seem purple prose but for hundreds of floral artists gathered in Hamilton this week for the national Floral Art Society's eighth national exhibition it's just the stimulating ticket.

For over a year, more than 150 teams of designers from floral art clubs around the country have been working on creations inspired by such colourful descriptions.
Yesterday, the grey, utilitarian expanse of the cavernous Waikato Events Centre in central Hamilton rapidly disappeared behind blossoming works of supreme artistry.

From early in the day there was a scurry of activity as tense, focused yet friendly women assembled prepared components and patiently clipped, wired, wrapped, stuck and tied in the final elements of their displays.

The results are fantastic in the true sense of the word and, like the natural materials they are made of, have been months in gestation but will bloom for only a few days.

The exhibition, aptly titled FloravisioNZ, is open to the public from today until Sunday. It occurs only every five years and it is being held in the Waikato for the first time in 36 years. The first exhibition was in Lower Hutt in 1969, where the theme was "a voyage of discovery".

For the onlooker, there is a dreamlike quality to the creations. You can admire them as a whole or perhaps for their colour, form, drama, delicacy or majesty. Only close examination reveals what they are made of.

It's a fascinating process that turns the ordinary strange and the strange stunning.

I wonder whether there is a naked peacock running around Tokoroa but Christine Mandeno assures me friends and the $2 Shop have supplied the feathers for the splendid creature at the centre of her group's piece, "art nouveau elegance" with its subtitle "the afternoon of the peacock".

I also learn from Mandeno that tears go into the creative process but also lots of happy afternoons in the company of others with the sort of flower power the drop in/drop out generation never envisaged.

Nearby, Marion Partridge and Joy Evans are glad of an audience for the moment they undo the bubblewrap from a metre-high sculpture representing a koru. Thankfully, no tears arise. It's survived the journey intact from North Otago.

The centrepiece for their exhibit on the theme "frozen in bronze" seems to be made in part from woven mats painted gold, and green-tinged moss. As impressive as it is, it is dwarfed by the New Plymouth club's "wacky Naki critters gathered for a musical soiree". The Hamilton club, as befits a host, is celebrating the society's 40th anniversary with a large exhibit featuring four decades of changing floral styles.

They range from traditional, all-flower bouquets that might grace a church altar to architectural works that seem to owe much to Japanese ikebana.

Society secretary Claire Grant of Tauranga says club members generally meet once a month to practise their art or learn techniques from visiting tutors.

Designs have changed over the years not just with fashion but also because hot houses have done away with seasons for a lot of plants and many more are imported.

Proving that floral art doesn't have to be static, this week's event includes the floral equivalent of wearable art. Body flowers - a parade of garments made from flowers and foliage - is to be part of flower-themed entertainment at the Founders Theatre on Saturday.

There's probably nothing more entertaining than wondering what you would have done with a few flowers, a couple of flax leaves, a length of copper wire and the topics "memory of motley times" or "stretched to the limit".

Then it's time to stand back and admire what those with talent can do. And applaud.