My work is an attempt to capture the connection between delicacy and strength. These creations are rooted in personal experiences and self-discovery. I’ve long been captivated by the symbolism of flowers, their fleeting beauty, resilience, and inevitable decay. Like many, I find their variety, fragility, and persistence endlessly fascinating: growing through cracks, reaching for light, and existing in countless forms, scents, and colors. I am fascinated by the way they burst from dirt and soil only to return there, by their ability to reach for light and grow between cracks in concrete, the fact that some possess both stamens and pistils, and the countless shapes, colors, scents, and medicinal properties they exhibit.

I've made flowers out of paper, fabric, clay, tin, ice, jello, frosting, sugar, wood, plastic bottles, metal, and paint. My first memory of creating flowers was out of a tin pie pan that I cut slits into, folded up like a huge tulip and attached a wire hanger stem. I painted them with a mixture of dust from my sidewalk chalk and Elmers glue. In Art school, I sculpted hundreds of porcelain flowers to fill wheel-thrown bowls.

Creating thousands of flowers for a single piece has become a nearly meditative process, offering me an escape into a quiet mind.
I hope my work gives tribute to the natural world in an unexpected way. Viewers have asked why I don’t add centers to the flowers? There are a few reasons; I appreciate the subtlety of the petals alone, centers tend to immediately reveal the flowers, I really love the moment the observers realize that the entire canvas is covered in individual flowers. Additionally, the centers of flowers are reproductive, and there is significance in their absence.

I’m not sure quite how many of these little flowers I have handmade, but I hope to be fortunate enough to continue making thousands and thousands more. With each piece, I find more inspiration and excitement to continue my journey of exploration, the colors, size, and their shapes; my passion and homage to the world of flowers.

Christine Tonolini