FLOWER HOUSE INSTAGRAM FAQs (updated 3/3/22)
what was flower house?
learn about the 2015 project here.
what’s going on with the flower house instagram?
the FH IG is being used as a place to share the work of Black florists, gardeners, landscapers, farmers, horticulturalists, botanists, and other designers working in plants and flowers.
if you’d like to suggest a post (including suggesting yourself!) please find a form at the bottom of this page.
why is the FH IG centering Black designers working in plants and flowers?
from lisa waud, flower house founder and creative director: in 2015, i produced flower house with the “simple” goal of bringing joy and awe to flower house visitors through a large-scale art installation filling a house with flowers and plants. in the years since, i continue to recognize the privilege i have primarily by being white as an artist in detroit—and a white person in america—my whiteness has always afforded me a foundation to imagine and accomplish this immense project and the art i continue to do.
in 2020, thinking along these lines, i was excited to learn about the detroit Black farmer land fund (DBFLF), giving ownership of city land to Black farmers. while the organization was launched specifically to raise money, i immediately thought of the flower house property. at the time, the land was planted and maintained as a public park, which felt like a pleasant ending to the story of my project. it was immediately obvious to me that the real ending of the flower house story should be the beginning of a new story. i reached out to DBFLF about donating the land to them.
fast forward to a year later, DBFLF co-founder erin bevel let me know they had matched the property to a community visionary interested in developing a children’s sensory garden. after some discussion about how to utilize the social media following that flower house accrued, erin offered that sharing my realization about my privileged position as a white person could encourage other white folx in detroit and in the US to look at their own resources for opportunities for restorative economics.
recently, erin and i spoke with jennifer jewell on her cultivating place podcast about the detroit Black farmer land fund, flower house, and the property transfer, with erin sharing personal and historical contexts of Black land ownership in this country and our city of detroit.
this is the backstory of the flower house instagram platform transforming into an exciting instrument of restorative economics. it will be a platform for the work and visions of Black floral designers and Black plant people, cross-pollinating a healthier ecosystem than the isolated one in which flower house existed.
why focus on Black designers? why not expand to include the entire BIPOC community? and 2SLTBGQIA+ designers? and disabled designers?
again, from lisa: based in detroit, i am a white artist working in a majority Black city. my focus for this instagram feed, which was a project born in detroit, is to share the work of designers who identify as Black and are working in plants and flowers. this will be my priority.
could i widen the focus at some point? of course. but at this moment, this is an earnest, public exploration of an interest to deepen my awareness of Black designers.
