Meanwhile across town at the University of Washington, all eyes are on the quad, where the annual cherry blossoms are due to unfurl any minute. As is my annual custom, I’ve been monitoring the live feed from the UW Cherry Blossom Cam with a botanist’s focus. As of this morning it looks like a couple Yoshino trees are in full flower, and the rest are close behind — just in time for the U District Cherry Blossom Festival (through March 29, including a Night Blossoms event Mar. 21).
And one more flower festivity: Tomorrow is Pike Place Market’s 29th annual Daffodil Day (March 20, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.), a rain-or-shine tradition wherein anyone can grab a free bunch of yellow blossoms while the showy supplies last. Bonus: a special busker line up. Does this town love spring or what?
Local galleries and museums are going flower-crazy as well, with several new shows embracing pollen power (achoo!).
At the Frye Art Museum, Wallflowers (through May 17) presents a bouquet of floral paintings pulled from the Frye’s collection and arranged in an abstracted version of a formal garden. Among the galleries’ trellised walls and peek-a-boo views are still-lifes spanning the 19th and 20th centuries — each of which reveals how different artists have explored and expanded the tradition.
See pretty pink “Roses” by Danish artist Soren Emil Carlsen, blousy and soft-lit “Chrysanthemums” by John Marshall Gamble, mid-century modern “Poppies” by Seattle artist Margie H. Griffin and “Still Life with Lilacs” by Northwest artist Delbert Gish (now 90 years old and living in Medical Lake, Washington). All of these blooms express something unique to their artistic era while sharing the message that cut flowers wilt (translation: life is fleeting, put down your phone).
Among the still-lifes are takes on floral wallpaper by contemporary artists from all over, including Polly Apfelbaum, Azadeh Gholizadeh and Jite Agbro. These artists dissect floral imagery, grafting original strains with digital patterns to create a whole new kind of still-life on the walls. The most spectacular of these is “Wallwork,” a mural-scale, immersive piece by Nick Cave, inspired by vintage tin trays adorned with flowers.
At Seattle Art Museum, Meadow is a new installation (through April 11, 2027) of oversized flowers hanging above visitors’ heads in the South Hall (free entry). Created by Dutch artist duo Studio DRIFT, the kinetic blossoms open and close according to human presence. Once triggered, the printed fabric flowers burst open as if in slow-mo, revealing an intricate architecture of petals and colored light within.
And there are plenty more flowers for the picking.
In South Lake Union, gaze upon the clay garden of Bellingham artist Holly Hudson’s “The Giving Tree (World Tree)” (through August; SLU art tour May 13, 6-8 p.m.). Part of the Shunpike Storefronts program, the enormous ceramic tableau — with 152 separate porcelain sculptures — takes over a long storefront window at Terry and Republican streets. Blending Wedgwood-style pottery with myths from many cultures, the scene depicts flora, fauna and humanity fully connected, including legs that sprout flowering branches, a human head sitting in a bird’s nest and a fox wrapped in rose thorns.
At Pacific Place, the small but mighty Ghost Gallery presents Tonic: A Medicinal Flora and Fungi Group Exhibition (through April). Some 98 artists share paintings, pottery, potions and all kinds of curiosities inspired by natural healing. I’m especially fond of Julie Ann Mann’s sculptures with Devil’s Claw and deer vertebrae, Wynnona Susilo’s flowery tapestry and Jana Nicole’s collaged paper botanicals.
Continue your garden art walk southward and check out Interplay, at Patricia Rovzar Gallery downtown (through March 28). Here, San Francisco botanical artist Ivy Jacobsen uses multiple layers of oil, acrylic and collage to add depth to portraits of the plants all around her, which mingle with flora from her imagination.
And in Pioneer Square, J. Rinehart Gallery presents two Northwest artists who know their way around a garland: Gala Bent, whose delicate, flower-infused drawings in A Woman Awash tell the story of a woman lost at sea; and natural fiber artist Tininha Silva (featured in Season 1 of Art by Northwest), whose It’s Not What I See, It’s How I Sea features organic wall sculptures that morph and bloom like undersea bouquets. (Both shows through March 25; joint artists talk March 21 at 1 p.m.)