Floral Artist Hamish Powell: "Sometimes It's More Interesting to Work With the Flow of Nature Than Against It"
Designed for ABASK, the creative's latest installation pairs lighting designs from over a dozen makers with sculptural blooms, plants, and organic matter in an ode to nature's delicate beauty, its ability to inspire, and to illuminate
The weather might be turning gloomy elsewhere in the world, but that isn't the case for Hamish Powell's own. This autumn, the star floral artist, known for lending his genius to fashion giants like Hermès and Loewe and, yes, to that Charli XCX viral wedding bouquet, teamed up with online homeware platform ABASK for a special shoot curated to mark the launch of the brand's debut lighting category. The collection is now live, but it didn't end there.
This week, Powell flew from his native London to New York to join ABASK at a new edition of the Salon Art + Design fair in what is the first outing of one of his signature breathing installations in the US. The cult British florist took the job seriously, integrating works from 13 of the 20 lighting makers that made the ABASK line a reality in his approach to reinterpreting organic matter in the most unexpected forms.
Featuring 1,500 repurposed corn husks, a material he first experimented with while working on this shoot, Hamish Powell's contribution to ABASK's booth at Salon Art + Design bridges the gap between the collectible and the ephemeral, granting a second life to seemingly meaningless natural forms.
Enveloped in a cloud of 1,500 corn husks, blooms, and sculptural greenery, the pieces on view include the butterfly-shaped, hand-painted lamps of Yuxuan Huang, Danish designer Helle Mardhal's gelatinous-looking, oddly shaped colorful light 'blobs', and Kickie Chudikova's octopus-cross-spaceship Murano glass creations, and vary in texture from carved wood to metal, from shell to leather and marble.
"Because the lamps had their own material language and personality, I wanted to approach each one uniquely, rather than imposing a singular style," Powell tells Livingetc of the approach behind the display, arguing that "flowers are good at making objects feel less static."
He viewed the elements of the composition — the unchanging designs and the decaying plants — as complementary. That the blossoms could be affected by the intensity of artificial light didn't bother him. If anything, the opposite. "I am interested in botanical materials that have a fascinating life beyond their point of perfection: sometimes it's more interesting to work with the flow of nature than against it."
Powell and Helle Mardahl Studio's Mushroom Hand-Blown Glass Table Lamp, one of the many designs directly influenced by nature's own whimsy and unexpectedness, part of the florist's ABASK installation at Salon Art + Design.
It is no coincidence, then, that Powell's favorite looks from the ABASK shoot for the collection were the two dried displays. For Yuxuan Huang's Spring Flower Lamp, a piece that reminded him of "an underwater creature", the floral artist used nori sheets glued onto wire armatures in a nod to ocean kelp.
Elsewhere in the install, he assembled more of the corn husks that take center stage at Salon Art + Design this week to frame The Feather Fiberglass and Japanese Paper Desk Lamp by Kilzi's founder Jorge Suárez Kilzi. "It was only when we turned on the lamp and saw the gorgeous layering of light through the corn husks that it blew my mind," Powell recalls.
Among the designs gathered in ABASK's debut Lighting Category, it was Kickie Chudikova's Pulpopolis series to take the prize for Powell: "you get a completely different combination of color and form depending on which angle you view the lamp from."
If there is one lamp he would take home today, though, it has to be one from Kickie Chudikova's Pulpopolis series, a four-piece drop casting Murano glass into octopus-like silhouettes in green, orange, red, white, and purple tones. "You get a completely different combination of color and form depending on which angle you view the lamp from," Powell says of how the piece made it to the top of his wish list. It is a pick that makes me think about just how hard it must be to create an installation that looks as good illuminated artificially as in broad natural light. Nothing that the internet-famous floral artist can't deal with.
"You're essentially making two compositions: one with the lamp off and another with it on," Powell says of how to style flowers for both settings. Backlighting, he explains, can reveal the full vascular network of a petal, while the silhouettes of other flowers might be flattened in result. Reds can become almost black under warm light, whereas yellows and oranges become incredibly luminous.
Sometimes, light actually puts the finishing touch on the styling: "I often find the shadow a plant produces more interesting than the plant itself," Powell confesses. "That happened with the Green Mushroom Hand-Blown Glass Table Lamp by Helle Mardhal: only during the shot did we notice how gorgeous it was to backlight the anthuriums."
Bring the Inspiration Home — Our Picks From the ABASK Lighting Collection
In the picture: The Spring Flower Lamp by Yuxuan Huang at ABASK.
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