BALBOA PARK – The San Diego Museum of Art announced that the record-breaking 44th iteration of its signature annual fundraiser Art Alive raised $1.3 million for its exhibits, education, outreach and public programs.
Thousands streamed through the museum doors during the series of events from April 24 to 27, including the 10th annual Bloom Bash, to see the museum decked out in ephemeral floral art arrangements.
Through a competitive selection process, nearly 100 designers were given an artwork at the museum to interpret using flowers.
Paintings, drawings, sculptures and for the first time, architecture, were evoked through botanical designs. The participants described the artistic competition as a place of community as they return each year with new ideas and old friends.
Many of the floral artists have participated for years, if not decades.
David Root submitted a design each Art Alive for the past 34 years. This year, he was one of the few to take inspiration from “american minimal” with his interpretation of DeWain Valentine’s “Circle, Blue-Violet,” ultimately winning second place in the members’ choice awards.
This year’s theme, architecture, also gave the participants a different art form to emulate through flowers and plants.
In the upstairs gallery with models of Lord Norman Foster’s buildings, florists created domes, towers, decks and more to evoke the Light and Space movement architecture the firm is known for.
“I’ve never done anything like this before, so this is a challenge to think outside the box,” said Melissa Cummings, owner of Pacific Beach-based Petals by the Beach. She used the clean lines and white color palate with plenty of light like Foster + Partners.
Professionals and amateurs participate
Some like Cummings are professionals but other amateurs also participate.
“I love doing it. That’s why I’m here. I’m not trying to sell myself. I’m not trying to be a florist on the go. I really just enjoy it and I want other people to enjoy it,” said Tiffiney Welles, who has participated for 13 years and won an award in 2023 for her interpretation of a chair.
She said she appreciates that as a community event, there is huge diversity among the participants, making the resulting designs multi-faceted and unique.
For 2025, Welles was assigned two miniature floral-decorated vases in the East Asian art section of the museum.
She used her own plain white vase, broke it, and had the flowers exploding from it because the color could not be contained. She used blue delphinium, yellow dahlias, coffee bean berries, thistle, cherry blossom branches, dried fern and a Marilyn Monroe rose from her garden.
In the architecture gallery, Laura Vavrunek wove greens into a dome over calla lilies to represent the glass dome she won in a lottery. “I felt really special to be part of this architectural exhibit because I have an engineering and interior design background. The structure… called to me,” Vavrunek said.
Groups of “flower friends” encouraged each other as they installed this year’s creations on Thursday, April 24 to be admired by thousands of visitors over the weekend.
Others are even family. Nancy Baldwin participated for 27 years, first with her mom and now with her daughter. “Every year we say, ‘oh, they’re so much more amazing.’ Yet, they’re still so much more amazing [each year],” Baldwin said. She has mentored five different floral artists at Art Alive.
This year had record-breaking attendance, with 13,000 visitors total over the long weekend at the series of events, including a Premiere Dinner, Bloom Bash, Garden of Activities and Floral Exhibition.
Standing by their installations, some designers used the opportunity to educate the influx of visitors about the artworks they interpreted.
Lori Moore explained that her assigned piece, an untitled painting by Wilfredo Lam, depicted African demons, who are mischievous, silly and not scary at all compared to their western counterparts. “I wanted my piece to actually have something that was giggly and fun and impish as well,” Moore said, who had moving spheres in her piece.
Nearby, Thelma Gerome usually does Ikebana flower arranging, a Japanese style with plenty of space between each flower so their full face can be seen, rather than a mass of flowers typical of Western floral arranging.
This year, she decided to try something different. Her creation this year was a literal interpretation of still life painting “Bouquet” by Henri Matisse while still using Ikebana skills, because Monet and Matisse were inspired by Japanese print blocking, which uses similar principles to Ikebana.
“They always want to see each individual flower. This does that,” Gerome said. She chose the piece to celebrate rebirth and spring.
The biggest installation each year is in the rotunda, spanning three stories in the center of the SDMA building. The hanging, spinning, interconnected circles this year were designed by husband and wife team Daniel Schultz and Natasha Lisitsa.
For additional information on Art Alive, visit sdmart.org/artalive.
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