To kick off the year, our schoolwide art collaboration focused on the subject of flowers in artworks. I launched it with a famous quote by the French artist Henri Matisse: There are always flowers for those who want to see them. This suggests that beauty and positivity are always with us in the world but require an open and optimistic mindset to notice them. Joining Matisse, I hope this Crossroads art collaboration encourages people to look for and appreciate the joy and wonder that surrounds them, even in seemingly ordinary places or during difficult times.
Flowers have been a profound and universal muse for artists throughout history, appearing in various art forms as symbols of emotions, beauty, and life’s transient nature, and as subjects for aesthetic exploration. While they can evoke different feelings like love, purity, or mortality, artists like Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet have also depicted them for their pure visual appeal, using vibrant colors and delicate forms to create atmosphere and beauty. Modern artists continue to reinterpret floral motifs, transforming them into conceptual works with lasting cultural and artistic significance.
For our project, we looked at many aspects of flowers in art, including:
- symbolic meanings
- aesthetic and conceptual uses
- key artists and movements
- famous floral paintings
- cultural and historical context
Students were first tasked to create a design on a flower shaped magnet that highlighted something that interested them, using text, graphics, shape, line, and pattern. As they were completed, we formed them into magnet clusters, one of which is installed and displayed in Fanger (5–8), and the other in Klee classrooms (K–4). Next, students focused on a floral design that was assembled onto the bulletin board here in Bancroft. Grade levels were assigned a different medium, and each student crafted an inspired flower to join our vases of blooms as we started the new school year!
