For the last two years I’ve been providing floral arrangements for Seattle University. The best part is, I get to put down my bouquets, throw on my utilikilt (not really), pull out my sketch book, and construct something large. 20 feet long by 10 feet tall to be exact. This time, it is… THE WALL OF FLOWERS! (sorry the photos are a little grainy)
Wall of Flowers
This post is not so much to show you how neat the wall was, but really to bring up a communication medium that should be promoted. Sketching. I use it daily to communicate since words, when spewn from my mouth, take on a kitten-thrashed yarn ball quality. I don’t notice this happening to others as often, and it may just be my own perception. But, many times I find myself staring at a client, mouth ajar, words smacking into each other in my head, but none floating to the top. These are not hard words. I’m talking about words that I had probably used several times that day, like progress, or notify, or discuss…stapler. Luckily, I have a pen, paper, my hand, your napkin, to pick up where my brain checks out. (By the way, this also means I am a champion blind-drawer, and have an uncanny ability to spell backwards during bouts of Cranium… This also means that if you are a person who likes to fill in the blanks, we will probably get along great).
So I’d like to share with you the humble sketch for the Wall of Flowers and its associated gooey verbal description in dialog form.
Seattle University Client: “So what is this going to look like?”
Me: “Kind of this sandwich trellis thing with one side colored another color so when you look at it sideways you get a glimpse of another color with flowers in tubes stuck around in splotches a couple of places that’ll kind of fade out like whoooosh. Maybe they’ll join together but maybe not.“ (I want to point out that I am 30 years old, not 5) “I’ll draw something up for you” (ding ding ding)
Seattle University Client: “Ah, I see, you are hired.”
(Thank you trusty sketchbook!)
And then we follow up with a more detailed version…
And then we construct…
One exciting bonus: During wind storms, the tent wall behind the Wall of Flowers would smack the backs of the flower tubes and send them flying out of the wall. This resulted in the renaming of the wall to the Suicidal Flower Wall.
Tags: floral arrangement, flower wall, red and white flowers, stage flowers, trellis
and Erik just said you were building a “trellis-thingy”….that sounded very engineer-ish!
Ummm, I get it. How to convey brilliance into words?
Not necessary Darlin’. You are quite brilliant my girl.
I give you the ‘makers’ bow. I can’t wait to usher fir and all else from natures field and flower this Saturday, with you!