Santa Fe in late April is a fortnight of nerves. The apricots have already flowered and everyone is waiting to find out whether the last freeze took them. Flora opened into exactly that moment, on 27 April 2018, and ran until 30 June, which is to say it ran from the anxiety straight through to the monsoon.
The exhibition
Flora: A Celebration, Rebirth, Awakening ran from 27 April to 30 June 2018.
Thirteen artists showed: Alexandra Ewing, Andrea Senutovitch, David Michael Kennedy, Deborah Samuel, Louis Leray, Maggie Hanley, Marion Wasserman, Mateo Galvano, Patti Levey, Robert Stivers, Tasha Ostrander, Victoria Goldman, and Willis F. Lee.
In the collection’s words
Flowers are the oldest subject there is and therefore the hardest one to bring anything to. What made the show work was the spread of temperament across thirteen people who had no reason to agree: a photographer’s calla lily hanging near a painter’s poppy, a video artist’s sensibility in the same rooms as a straight studio still life. Nobody was asked to be pretty. Several of them declined.
A show about rebirth is also, unavoidably, a show about the other thing. The best work in Flora knew it.
Continue exploring
- Robert Stivers, Deborah Samuel, Willis F. Lee, and Marion Claire Wasserman
- All artists at Webster Collection
- Photographs in the collection and paintings and prints
- The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, for the obvious reason and one less obvious one
- All exhibitions at Webster Collection
