The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
~Pablo Picasso

“People are hungry for it.”, I said to the two women standing before me. “Oh, no, we are desperate.”,one replied. These words were spoken at last weekend’s Art in Bloom at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This event which showcases floral arrangements interpreting pieces of art from the many galleries had been on hold during the last years. It was another treasured spring ritual that had been sidelined by the pandemic. But this year it was back and in full force as people came in droves to bask in the color and creativity of both professional floral artists and those who simply love art and the opportunity to do something with flowers that is perhaps a little out of their comfort zone.

Desperate. While the women and I laughed a bit at her rather dramatic statement, her words have stuck with me. She made this statement after remarking that she felt there were more people than ever in attendance this year. She could have been right. I don’t know. But I do think she was on to something about the deep desire and need that brought the crowds to this four day event. Even with masks hiding partial expressions on faces, their eyes told the story. The sheer joy at being at something that focused on beauty, that lifted people above the ordinary of their days. With the memory of quarantine and daily doses of bad news in the not too distant review mirror, perhaps there was a certain desperation that people carried with them.

As people we are created for making meaning of our lives. Over the last years that meaning has taken on some very sharp edges. I, for one, do not always like what I see and how I interpret the movement of the world. And so, to be surrounded by art that spans backs centuries is a good reminder that we humans have prevailed, we have come through many terrible things and are still here. To add the gift of taking those pieces of art…paintings, sculptures, statues, masks, tapestries…and asking people in the here-and-now to make a likeness of them in flowers carries with it a balance of sorts. These floral arrangements last only a few days. The pieces of art continue to tell their stories from all over the world, from cultures that no longer exist and those that have thrived and evolved. Together they speak to the fragility and the strength of the human experience.

The great artist Georgia O’Keefe said: ”I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” As people roamed the galleries last weekend they were likely looking for things they had no words for. Some of it may have been a healing of the desperation that can come from being bombarded by the messages the world is sending daily.  Some of it may have been a pursuit of color and shape that has been so remote in this spring that is slow to arrive. Some of it may have been a starvation for beauty that can stay hidden in the cold and brutal temperatures of a Minnesota winter, that gets shut out by media messages that focus on all the negative things happening.

Of course, I write all this knowing that the desperation I may feel is minute in comparison to that which others feel around the world. Looking at the women and children standing in lines to escape from Ukraine and those of the men who have been pressed into military service from what had been a normal, regular life gives new meaning to the word desperate. Their stories and lives haunt us and should cause us to count our blessings and offer whatever aid and prayer we can. Actress and artist, Stella Adler, remarked that “life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” Maybe another thing an experience of an exhibit like Art in Bloom does is to nurture our souls so we might be more caring and generous to those who are in pain, those who suffer. 

Outside our walls, spring is generously arriving now. How we name and hold our own desperations and hopes will help us tell our stories of this particular year, this particular spring. In the meaning making we do, may we wrestle with both the fragility and the strength we carry within from a long line of ancestors…artists… on whose shoulders we stand. And may we find some morsels of beauty and art along the way.