On floral design,

which I do not do very much or very well:

"Flower arranging is not considered a fine art, although what is created is often recreated in paintings and photographs that become inexplicably expensive. Where in the signature of a painting by a Dutch master is the name of the florist who created the bouquet? We might assume the painter created the floral display, but this may not necessarily be true. Floral designers must accept that they are toiling, for the most part, in anonymity.

Florists rarely become famous. And yet when a floral display graces a gala event at a gallery or museum, the living beauty of fresh flowers easily upstages static art."

Well, it's the permanence of static art that allows it to become famous, right? Still.

"You may think it highfalutin to talk about floral design as art, but art it is. A flower arrangement is an intimate, sensual expression of creativity, always meant to be enjoyed by at least two of the senses. A florist in a shop, much more so than any other artist, is forced to produce works of art--using a highly perishable medium--on demand. Florists are performance artists whose creations grow and change and decay, and the entire process must be seen as an evolving continuum of the medium (flowers) in order to be fully appreciated. Learning to create fine art of this type takes time, and learning to appreciate it takes even longer..."

Just something I read in Linda Beutler's book, Garden to Vase which I recently obtained. We met her on the old blog when she spoke at the San Francisco Botanical Garden's design symposium, Gardens that Work.