This piece is a true balancing act, the pencil heliconias playing together one firmly in place, and the other just holding on held by a bit of dried palm. It much like building a house of cards sometimes, perhaps the precarious placing of flowers is a big part of the thrill. These arrangements often fall, and fall, and fall again until I find a way to get it to work if only for a few minutes. It’s work and play all rolled into one.

Tonight was the opening for Artomatic 2012 so my partner Frederick Nunley and I headed over to Crystal City to be there to show our work. There were lots of people for opening night, and tons of art to see. So far we’ve only been able to see the first two floors (and there is so much to go back and get a longer look at).Several friends have work on the upper floors and we want to go back and see their work and attempt to take in this collosal art show. It’s great to see other types of work, glean inspiration for future work, and experience art as a community.

Some days I have a pretty good idea of how to use the materials I choose and other days I cut things and then “force” myself to come up with a creative solution to work with them. Today the two most outstanding things blooming in the garden were the white sweetpeas (heavenly) and blue nigella, so I just selected them in anticipation. What I came up with is in part a mass design and it’s also an ikebana to be viewed from above too. All the flowers are massed to one side to reveal the water on the other(so it can also be considered an arrangement featuring water).The hto pink sweetpeas are just beginning to bloom, so I will gather some ideas for them as well as some ideas for more of the white.

My work at Artomatic 2012 is installed finally! I just had to go add the remaining bits, paint a column and add my name in my space. The work is made of lots of cherry branches and 120-150 crapsedia stems, the cherry branches are nailed together and the craspedia is held in place using predrilled holes (no glue required). It feels great to have everything(except my artist statement) in place and ready to go for the opening Friday. Only one side view photo of the work tonight, it’s late and I am beat.

Hooray, it’s day 300 of my project! This afternoon I worked on my installation at Artomatic, the nearly completed piece is shown below. I still have a lot of work to do to finish up tomorrow, but for today I am pretty happy with what I have done so far. My space is pretty large and I wanted to do something big, but manageable with the time I had to work on it.The completed piece will be about 8 feet by 5 feet, and it is built using cherry branches with red painted ends and yellow craspedia. I’ll post updated photos of the completed piece in the next few days. Tomorrow is the last day for installation, everyone in the show (which I believe is about 1000 artists) has to be finished installing by 10PM Sunday night. Artomatic will offically open on Friday, May 18th.

I’m squeezing in my daily arrangement and finishing my prep work for Artomatic. The last of the constructed pieces for my Artomatic installation have been painted and they will be added to the other pieces that were put in place last weekend. Tomorrow I am off to finish installing before the deadline late sunday night. The opening for the show in next Friday night!

My preparations for Artomatic continue, so I thought I would post a sneak peek at them. Below are some of the prepared branches, only partially painted with a white primer. At last they have all been sawed(which is something that I believe has contributed greatly to a pinched nerve in my upper back) and the construction of these pieces is done. Most of the painted is done with only a few pieces left. This weekend will be the final push to install my piece for the show, and I am sure there will be lots of artists rushing to get their work installed before the Sunday evening deadline.