Revel & Hearten — FLORALKIN

My floral work is a synthesis of encounters with people, places and schooling throughout my life. I’m originally from Oxford, Mississippi, where the Wisteria grows wild and the air is so thick at times it’s an effort to breathe. As a young child I would gather botanical offerings of flowers picked from my mother’s gardens and nature elements collected from exploring and climbing magnolia trees. Coming from this cozy world, out of which my family had almost never ventured other than my grandfathers’ tours in World War II, I experienced an aesthetic awakening when I was asked to accompany a friend and her family to Europe for the summer. My thirteen-year-old heart and mind were enlarged and I was left with a deep appreciation for art, culture and beauty.

In a high school photojournalism class, I was introduced to Eudora Welty’s photography, and particularly her environmental portraits that showed people in the settings that were a part of who they were. I’d found a new way to communicate. My teacher encouraged me to study art, and advocated to my parents about it. No one in my family had been an artist or considered that an area of study. Three years later, I arrived at Savannah College of Art and Design, feeling like an imposter among classmates of whom many were born into the art world, but feeling inspired in the backdrop of moss-garlanded live oaks and stunning architecture. I threw myself into my studies and consumed every opportunity. I was able to meet and assist renowned photographers like Debbie Fleming Caffery to photograph then-emerging musicians at CMJ showcase including St. Vincent and Aloha, and attended a dress rehearsal opera in Pierre Cardin’s rock quarry amphitheater while studying in Lacoste, France. I can still picture the billowy fabric wrapping itself around the ballet dancers as an aria echoed late into the night. This chapter was so otherworldly and left deep impressions that still emerge in my work.

Studying alternative process photography was a great foundation of learning the art of controlling light and curating your composition, which has a huge influence in my floral work today. It made me slow down and make sure everything was perfect, because with a large format camera, you may have only one shot.

While studying in France through SCAD, a classmate passed along the opportunity to intern at Audubon Magazine in New York City. I took a break from school and interned in the art departments of both Audubon and Domino Magazine (when Deborah Needleman reigned). It was such an amazing time to be in New York in my early twenties, learning from some of the best photo directors and art department heads in the magazine world. It was fast-paced and filled with exhilarating encounters with art, people and culture. Still, and it seems silly to say, but a part of me missed the backdrop of trees and the ease of finding one to rest beneath and even climb.

My first job out of art school was working with Anthropologie as an in-house artist based in Nashville. This was a switch, to tell visual stories three-dimensionally. That season also expanded me as an artist, and I felt the affirmation of seeing some viewers of the vignettes even be moved to tears. At the same time, it meant working odd hours in a windowless tucked away room, cranking out a lot of prefabricated ideas. I began to see the underbelly of fast fashion, and really wanted my work to encourage people in a humanizing way and not only to inspire consumption. I felt my creative self withering away, and frankly didn’t want to create anymore. I saved up and left my job to study at L’Abri Fellowship in an old manor house in southern England, hoping to investigate a lot of questions about art, ethics and being. I had grand ideas of learning from a brilliant scholar who was my assigned tutor, but after she listened intently on my purpose for coming, she looked me in the eyes and said, “Right now I think it is best for you to go on long walks along the Hampshire footpaths and not study. Let’s revisit your questions in a month’s time.” During those walks I gathered autumn botanical specimens, revisiting the practice from my childhood. Little creations were placed around the grounds and inside the manor. I also began reading works by Wendell Berry and discussing those ideas of our relationship to place and nature at tea times with my now husband.

After L’Abri, we worked on small farms in Europe. I realized I wanted to work with plants, and knew there was much to learn with this fleeting medium, but didn’t know how to make this all come together. So we moved stateside, got married, and I worked various jobs in urban farming, and at plant nurseries designing large-scale planted urns, learning how to care and tend to plants and flowers. This led into working at a floral shop in Nashville, learning the essentials of floral care and designing pieces to suit a given customer’s occasion and aesthetic. We eventually moved to St. Louis, and I was approached to do wedding flowers. My work began to snowball and I was thrust into the floral wedding world.

When my mother became very ill, I became a caregiver for her, while also having a newborn and three-year-old of my own to care for. Needless to say, it was a strained time, yet I wanted to bring little snippets of beauty to my mother’s bedside during her last days—a blooming dogwood branch, a small gathered bunch of daffodils—once again bringing small botanical offerings. Seeing severe pain and death makes one re-evaluate what is important, where precious time should be spent. I knew I did not want to merely make “pretty” things. As my wise therapist told me, “Marcie, beauty cannot love you back, or others.”

I participated in Art In Bloom at the Saint Louis Art Museum, which was really a turning point and has been great for exposure. I also sought out to collaborate with other artists in different mediums, to execute a larger collaborative body of work. It was a beginning to creating large-scale floral installations. I gleaned from my Anthropologie window display days while needing to tell a different story. The approach to my designs is somewhat methodical. With the large-scale installations and even smaller floral arrangements, I always have to step back and ask myself, how do I want the viewer to feel, what texture, color or gesture of the flowers or branches will communicate that, and how should it be positioned in its setting.

I’m grateful to be at a place where I can create site-specific arrangements and large-scale floral installations for events, and am also moving into styling and floral design for architectural photo shoots, along with a dappling of weddings. The ability to create bespoke pieces has also allowed me to glean from my varied past. I’m still sifting my way through this ephemeral medium. I keep creating, offering and seeing what is enjoyed and moves people and myself. This creative work has become a family affair. My daughters and husband help me plant varieties of flowers in our backyard that are not accessible in the local market. We love being together and creating spaces for the growth of flowers and anticipating their harvest. Recently, while planting fall bulbs with my three-year-old, I was taken aback when she asked, “Mama, why are there flowers?” I still wonder at that question. I think it is a question of what it means to be human, why we need this impractical yet breathtaking gift which grows into its unfurled beauty for a brief moment and brings wonder to our spaces. I hope to continue to ask and respond to that through my work.

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Marcie Sherman is the creator of St. Louis-based floral design company Revel & Hearten. Marcie is an artist formally trained at Savannah College of Art and Design, who found her way into florals and large-scale floral installations, gleaning from many rich experiences of living overseas, interning at Domino and Audobon magazines in New York, being an in-house artist for Anthropologie, engaging in urban farming and horticulture, and coming back full circle to her childhood love of nature and her late mother's flower gardens in Mississippi. She sees flowers as an inspirationally fragile, ephemeral and living medium, to which she brings her sense of composition and visual storytelling.