BUS STOP BLOOM: A FLOWER STORY
As artists we ask a lot to see an idea through. We sacrifice our bodies, money, endless hours, opportunities to have relationships, normalcy, etc in order to see an idea through. We ask for others to help us by contributing perspective, emotional support, and labor. Most of all, we ask the world to receive our art, and in doing so, ask the world to receive our voice as human beings. In spite of living in a culture of the consumable moments, it’s alot to ask for someone to listen to us, to see us. But this is what we do. My work is very personal, but I would never be satisfied making it only for myself. I make it to have a conversation, to share a connection with others. No one ever said it is easy, because what is safe doesn't always equal what is right. Sometimes we say we want the truth but we really don't want all of it, because it is too painful. But truth is beauty, an objective fact the end.
The aim of the Bus Stop Bloom project was to use wild-growing flowers, universal symbols of beauty, to create accessibility and appreciation for natural elements in an otherwise urban yet intimate space. I chose the bus stop at Geary Ave and 25th St, a busy transfer stop that I spend a lot of time at. After scouting and gathering plants from public spaces across the city (plants native to SF but not indigenous or endangered) I worked to arrange and install the flowers with the help of a fellow artist and friend Kimmy Haines. After 14 hours of work we finished installing at 8am, a Tuesday. We hung out for a few hours, watching people stop to look at the flowers, and talking with bus-riders. Some people said “it made their day” and thanked me for the gift. Some didn’t say anything, but stopped for a few seconds to take a photo. One bus driver stuck her head out the window to yell excitedly at me and Kimmy: “You made that?? I LOVE it!!” Two elderly men struck up a conversation about the current design of Muni bus stops, which launched into a conversation about the “good old days” in SF. Would that conversation had taken place if not for the flowers? I’m not sure. It felt good.
I had taken from the land in order to give it back to people in a simple but unexpected setting. I wanted for others to see what I see, to pause how I pause. To appreciate what I appreciate. Is that selfish? Maybe. Watching people begin to talk to each other, I felt pride and satisfaction of having seeing an idea come into fruition, that unmatched emotion of seeing something live outside of my mind, and that I had made it happen. Artists often deal with how to navigate authorship and ownership, and this kind of public installation felt like both a difficult challenge and a cathartic breakthrough in learning how to let go. I created something with my hands. But as soon as I hung those flower strands on those glass panels, they didn’t belong to me anymore. I had to let them be, and walk away from them, perhaps how a parent feels when they walk their child to school and leave them for the very first time.
I left for a bit and when I came back around 1pm the entire thing was gone. No trace of a single petal, leaf, or piece of string left. It was like it had never existed. I felt like I had been stabbed. A man, sitting at one of the stop seats, stared at me in mild curiosity, as I held back tears and took a photo of absence.
It was a guerilla-style installation. No one asked for it, and I knew the risks of it being a public site. Was I really that naive and hopeful to believe that no one would harm it, or at the least it would last a whole day? Yes, that is what I believed. I even imagined having some of the strands and bouquets, at least one or two, as dried remnants of this project, something to hold as an archive of a moment in time. Some of my friends optimistically suggested that maybe someone really loved the installation so much that they took it. A more probable and likely explanation is that city workers removed it, as they remove all unsanctioned objects obstructing public ordinance. It was not meant to exist there for long. But whoever removed it shortened that existence a lot more drastically than I had imagined.
I was in shock. I felt like I had written a love letter to the world, that the world crumpled it in its fingers and chucked it without a thought. A million metaphors went through my mind, which happens anytime I am trying to make sense of something I don’t understand. Shock passed through to anger, exhaustion, loss and mourning throughout the rest of the day. Was my idea of beauty not as universal as I thought? Why did I feel that my body had been personally rejected? How could flowers be offensive or harmful? Did the people who removed it and placed it into the trash, feel anything in doing so? How can I find connection in a world where flowers disrupt the peace and the only things sanctioned are paid advertisements, artificial images? And so on.
Upon waking the next day I felt more able to recall the joy I felt from myself and the joy I received from other people around the piece, in the few hours it lived. “It doesn’t matter that they destroyed it, only that it had existed.” I want to believe this. Sometimes it is harder than other times. But it did exist. Just as you and I exist now, just as some insects hatch and die within a single day, just as a lightning bolt of an idea strikes you and then is forgotten, just as the heat of the sun burns your skin and a cool chill spreads goosebumps after it dips below the horizon. All these things are terrible, all these things are beautiful.
At the end of the day, I went back and put up one last strand of flowers on the bus stop with an In Memoriam note. That single strand ended up lasting for more than ten days. I don’t know why. What I do know is that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is believe our own philosophy. I have no regrets. I feel deep gratitude to everyone who supported this project and received it with love, either in person or through photos. Their receival of my gift makes it exist forever.
May 2017
