By Joseph Hammann, Staff Writer

As spring blooms in Cincinnati, so too comes a place to celebrate the artistic creation of flowers from and to the Queen City. Enter “Art In Bloom,” an annual Cincinnati Art Museum event and fundraiser highlighting some of the most vibrant, grandiose and extraordinary floral artists in the area and around the globe. The event occurred from April 24-27 in the Cincinnati Art Museum, showing off floral recreations of some of the finest works in the museum. 

This rather crowded event was filled with self-guided tours as well as Q&A panels and discussions about the event. The different artists who were chosen did not get to choose which artifact in the museum to make their floral rendition of and instead had to do whatever they were assigned based on a jury of Cincinnati artists.

“I really found it interesting how they had this more spread out in different sections this year and I would’ve never thought I would work on this piece in particular,” said Morgan Winship, one of the selected floral artists, about her mindset and execution of her floral arrangement of “Horse,” a ceramic piece. “Getting the chance to use a 3D piece rather than a 2D piece allowed me to be more expressive with the presentation.”

What made most of the floral arrangements stand out other than the different mediums they represented were the contrasting types of flowers. Some were made with roses, others tulips, others lilies, others lesser known types of flowers.

Likewise, floral artist Karen Reynolds, who made a floral version of Marc Chagall’s “The Red Rooster (Le Coq rouge)” reflected, “I would have never chosen this painting, but I researched the artist and learned the style to get it to where it is.”

Reynolds later explained some of her remedies of the piece included tying rubber bands around the flower stems for three weeks before releasing them to get the complete shape among other remedies.

One spectator praised the content of the exhibit this year, describing it as a remarkable step up from last year. Perhaps such messages could bring some more upbringing to the Cincinnati Art Museum staff and therefore pave the way for how the future Art In Bloom events will be executed.