“I can’t believe how beautiful this looks!”
“This doesn’t look like yours.”
“It’s better to do it on the floor.”
Perhaps I should back up a bit.
The last horticultural therapy session that I held at Ann’s Place focused on flower pounding. Whereas a 60’s love child who grooved around Flower Power focused around expressing their hidden emotions via hallucinogenics, flower pounding is about expressing the color and pattern of the flower of choice. Most of the people who came to my session did not know what to expect and mused about the strange request on the sign-up sheet—“Bring a rubber mallet if you have one.”
The first client came armed with her mallet proud that she was able to purchase it for $2 at a local thrift shop. “It was a great bargain,” she crowed while swinging it in hand like Thor. As others started to file in they too were puzzled about what we would do but interested as nearly a dozen pansies and three large cineraria were stationed around the table.
“It’s great that so many of you have brought mallets,” I said. “It will make the project so much easier. What we will be doing today is creating art out of flowers through smashing them with a hammer.”
As many looked at me with a skeptical glare, I passed around some samples of prior “art” to show them the patterns that they could expect to get from the flowers. Some were shocked at the result and as the rest examined the pictures I described how to pound flowers.
“Everyone gets two pieces of paper to use to create their impressions. It is pretty simple. First you place the flower face down on your paper keeping in mind you want to spread the petals Next you cover it with a paper towel and then pound away a few times.”
I put my pansy down on the watercolor paper, cut off the back stem so that it would smooch down well, covered it and pounded away. Nuts.
When I pulled away the paper towel, I discovered that the image was muddy and incomplete. Not at all like other pansy prints I had created. What could be wrong?
As I sheepishly revealed my image to the class, I thought that the problem may be with the table. It was a wobbly plastic affair that flexed and moved as I walloped the flower. I tried another on the corner of the table, which had better support.
Success!
I told the class to try to find a more solid part of the table to hit but a few students decided to literally hit the floor to get better results. And they did.
Some clients were tentative at first but everyone soon got into the spirit and were populating their paper with different shapes and blooms. Soon everyone was flailing away swinging their hammers with abandon like John Henry.
“Can we pound the leaves?,” asked one client.
“The viola leaves don’t transfer well but I don’t know about the cineraria leaves,” I replied.
That motivated a one client to remove a leaf and give it a good smack. The result was stunning.
Even the efforts that were incomplete had a beauty to them with the opportunity to augment nature by using Sharpies and colored pencils.
One client’s first attempts produced an image that was not pleasing to her. “This doesn’t look right,” she said. "Don’t worry about the first image, it’s the composite of all your attempts that will define your art. Try another flower on top and create an image of a bouquet.”
Another client was becoming in the words of a friend, “the teacher’s pet.” She started on the floor and composed a beautiful mosaic of flowers making some appear to pop out of the page. Her poundings were magnificent.
Soon everyone had a portrait that they were proud of. I even got Wilda to come down and smack a single flower transferring the image perfectly onto the paper. She added a Sharpie stem to her pounding, looking quite pleased with herself. She was not alone. Though we only had two different types of flowers and just a couple of colors, everyone created unique images that they were pleased with. When I told everyone to take a pansy plant home with them it was an extra bonus that few had expected. A few were looking forward to taking flowers from home and continuing their pounding. I just hope that they will leave a few flowers for the nose, the eyes and the bees.
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