White Roses

I have created a ceiling/wall piece of white fabric roses to hang in the cloister at Knox College. Knox College is part of the University of Toronto but is also affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Because it is part of the church, many weddings are performed in the chapel. There is a lot of traffic in the cloister: students, faculty and churchgoers. I hope this piece will have an impact on these passers-by but also those attending weddings.

In a typical North American wedding, a large amount of money is spent on flowers. They are a major motif in weddings, but they only last for that one day. They wilt and die and lose their beauty, becoming another disposable object. Fake flowers tend to be very tacky and therefore not used even though they are more practical because they don’t die. With my piece I hope to remind people of the disposability and waste of real flowers and prove that fake flowers can be beautiful.

I created the flowers with a fold of white cotton broadcloth that I twisted and sewed together to create the rose shape. I went through a few different methods and this was the most efficient and cost effective method of creation. I also tested a few different sizes of roses to see which would have the most impact in the space. Once I had created a large amount of flowers, I began to sew them onto a piece of netting. This was for stability and for hanging purposes.