The Sculptress of Flowers

Rebecca Louise Law could not be anyone else: a nature manipulator. Her father is the sixth generation of gardeners and her mother comes from a family of painters whose only inspiration was flowers. «My art is the interaction between the human being and nature,» she says. But what she does is to create a new language.

Dead flowers that we put in the trash after a week, for the artist is precious material. With withered flowers, she makes sculptures encapsulated between crystals. However, what attracts most is the natural process of decay of the ductile and beautiful element.

The creator feels fascination hanging flowers from ceilings, whether they are in abandoned greenhouses, refined galleries, passageways, markets or cathedrals. Her craftwork, besides being meticulous, requires a lot of labor. She has a network of volunteers to whom, with basic instructions, will spend hours nailing flowers, from university students to women retired of garden clubs.

Two years ago she made her first installation in the United States. The commission was made by MTV for its Viacom building in Times Square, New York. There were 16,000 flowers of 14 species that were manipulated by 200 volunteers during a weekend. After four months, the flowers were picked up and sent to her studio in London for reuse in other artistic projects.

Her awareness for the environment is also seen in the complementary materials she uses. Copper wires hold flowers upside down. In this way, they are dried keeping their natural oils and, with it, the color. Exhibits are not just a sight, but a smell. The perfume impregnates every corner and will leave, what she calls, a ‘green’ smell of moisture.

The latest installation is at the NOW Gallery in London. They are 10,000 blue, yellow and white irises, that fall in waterfalls or waves, giving the sensation that they bloom in the air. The magic is that with each passing day, they change their shape and contours. A space that changes continuously over time, without feeling its pressure.

Rebecca Louise Law started her career as a painter, but soon realized that the margins of a canvas were small and jumped into installation art. Even so, every so often it returns to its origins and delights with oils paintings where only the essential remains.