Bromeliad: Finished

Last week I talked about making the base and petals for my new sculptural flower quilt inspired by a bromeliad.  After making these individual parts, it was time to assemble them.

I started by cutting slits the width of the petals into the origami base of the quilt.  I zig-zag stitched around the openings, then turned the quilt inside.  Once it was inside out, I poked the base of each petal through from the "front" (inside in the pictures below) to the "back" outside on the pictures below.  Then I connected all the petal wires together like a giant spider web, and hand stitched each petal base to the flower base at several parts. That was fairly challenging, my arm was barely long enough to reach in to get several of them.  Turning the whole thing right side out was a giant pain between the stiffness of the base and the fact that now there was a bunch more wire inside, not to mention a ton of quilted pokey petals, but I got it done.

Here you can see it in the process of being turned right-side out.

I'd originally hoped that the wire spiderweb and the hand tacking would be enough to hold the petals in place, but I didn't like how much gaping there was between the petals and the base, so I went back along each petal and hand stitched the petal to the base.  It was tough, I had to do it while the sculpture was on the wall, and of course the base is filled with aluminum window screen, so there were lots of pokey bits along the cut edges where the petals protrude.  I also realized that the flower was pretty saggy.  The base on its own was self-supporting but once I put all the petals on it didn't hold itself up enough so I had to put a wooden skeleton inside.  My arms and hands got pretty scraped up doing this, but finally after a fair amount of sculpting and some additional painting of the petals (which were looking very flat to me), I finally got it how I wanted it an Mike was able to come take some final pictures!  It's about 3x4 feet and protrudes a little over 2 feet out from the wall.

On Bromeliads, c. Shannon Conley, 2018.  32" x 50" x 28"  Photo courtesy of Mike Cox

On Bromeliads, c. Shannon Conley, 2018.  Detail 32" x 50" x 28"  Photo courtesy of Mike Cox

On Bromeliads, c. Shannon Conley, 2018.  Detail 32" x 50" x 28"  Photo courtesy of Mike Cox

I like the way it turned out, but because it's sort of abstracted and the petals have a red/green combo,  the final outcome reminds me more of what I imagine the offspring of a bromeliad and a poinsettia would look like than a straight up bromeliad.  But I guess that's ok!  I think this is my last big 3D flower for a while.  It's been fun making them and exploring different ways to confer dimensionality, but I think I'm going to work on some other stuff now.....

Remember, if you're in Santa Fe, NM between now and the middle of December, stop by the New Mexico State Capitol to see this and several other of my dimensional pieces in our show Off the Wall: Contemporary Mixed Media Works.