LOAM Studio

I am standing in my parent’s backyard another lifetime ago watching my father break open the ground with severe and galvanized drives of his shovel, excavating a portion of the yard to present me with my own garden. I’m freshly heartbroken and depressed in the world, and a logical solution has been decided for me: I will plant and care for a garden and it will recover me. At this time I am horrible with gardens, but I carefully grow colorful zinnias, forget-me-nots whose small burrs stick to my hems, lavender scabiosa, amaranthus like strange tendrils. I am redeemed and after it all dies back for the winter, leaving me standing in a cold yard with piles of dry roots at my feet, I am also inspired. I have developed a new understanding of what it means to observe nature defenselessly, without trying to figure it out somehow, and have allowed it to ground me. I get why we use flowers for everything- celebration, grief, apologies, death- because their beauty is soothing, familiarizing, and comforting. In a book I love, Simone De Bauvoir writes, “Unlooked-for fruit will come of this slow gestation.” In all of my gloom and meditation, I’ve at last seen what flowers are, am inspired by nature as it is. 

Before I was a florist I did not aestheticize flowers as I do now. Their potential was still a secret despite being notes in the margins of all my other work. Really, flowers were hardly flowers at all but rather motifs, symbols, and allegorical tools. In the lifetime before this when I was not a florist, I studied literature and critical theory and I was notably moved by the way nineteenth century women employed flowers as language to create secret networks of communication in their work. Flowers were exclusively semiotic, considered analytically and converted to bigger concepts. I did not observe them for their significance in the natural world- I argued for their narrative value while taking their benevolent beauty as mildly as possible. When my mental state worsened and a garden prescribed, the ephemeral quality of flowers soothed me found a way to soften the hardness in my heart. I emancipated the contemplation of flowers from the interpretation. My analysis of their purpose shattered against their beauty and potential, and inspired by the unique human ability to develop such a sentimental view of the natural world, I took flowers up as an art form. 

My inspiration for what I do of course hearkens back to literature, and I’ve discovered that all along I’ve been grabbed by the emotions of flowers and nature. I am stirred by our capacity as florists to manipulate the changing compositions of nature and deliver it to various settings, and to speak a specific language in doing so. Over and over again I am inspired by a line of work that reminds people that this existence isn’t just about us. In all its briefness, floral designs provide comfort, and we make art that everyone can benefit from. As the years go on and my style evolves, I find myself pairing down my designs and minimizing my recipes. I grow more and more inspired and impressed by gesture, mono botanical design, single stems with strange shapes, or the pairing of a flower with other natural elements that complement them, like fruits or rocks. I have a tendency, similar to my academic habits, to over-analyze and try to make something simple and beautiful more complex, so in order to stay inspired, it’s critical that I don’t lose sight of the sentimentality we assign to flowers as human beings. I dedicate portions of my time and offerings to Ikebana, the Japanese approach to floral design that emphasizes plants in their natural form. Their principle of “heaven, man, earth” suggests that each element is interconnected- and demands that we muse over our flowers as well as our relationships to them as sentient creatures. I work to not let production and operations impede the awesomeness of nature and my contemplation of it. In business, I work diligently to employ symbolism in my flower choices as an homage to my past life and to maintain an emotional connection to the plants I’m using. I want to constantly stay open to the layers of meaning that each element of the design contributes while staying continually inspired by nature, just as it is.

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Siobhán is a sentimental, curious florist living in the middle of Austin, Texas. A co-founder and creative director at LOAM Studio, she creates unique floral designs for events and brands in need of botanical-inspired content. She lets her photography inform her approach to floral design, oftentimes resulting in unexpected, architectural compositions and still-life designs. When she's not arranging flowers, she's exploring other mediums like clay and creative writing, or complaining about the Texas heat.