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October Issue 2005
Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC, Features Floral Designer, Chris Giftos
Chris
Giftos, former chief floral designer and manager of special events
for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), shares his
professional design expertise in South Carolina for the first
time. A Fantasy in Bloom: The Floral Art of Chris Giftos
takes place at the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC, on
Oct. 20 and 21, 2005, in conjunction with the opening of the museum's
major fall exhibition, Contemporary Photography in the Garden:
Deceits and Fantasies. Demonstrations with a lecture and slide
presentation showcase this notable floral designer who graced
the Met Museum with his elegant floral creations for nearly 20
years.
Giftos will create one of his signature "Great Hall" floral arrangements on Oct. 20 from 2:30 3:30pm at the museum. Tickets are $30 for the demonstration and refreshments and are limited to 30 participants.
On Oct. 21 the main program a slide-illustrated lecture and demonstration is offered twice. The morning session begins at 9:30am and includes lunch. The afternoon session begins at 1:30pm and includes an afternoon tea with refreshments. Tickets are $50 for either the morning or afternoon program. Giftos will be available to sign his book, A Bouquet from the Met, available in the Museum Shop and participants will also have the opportunity to win one of Giftos' floral creations. Seating is limited. Call early to reserve your place at 803/799-2810.
Giftos orchestrated countless events for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His challenge was to invent imaginative party settings that were never repeated. He also kept various galleries and the front information desk adorned with arrangements. Most challenging was his weekly sculpting of four massive bouquets for the niches of the Met Museum's Great Hall, one of America's most lovely public spaces.
His guiding principles are symmetry and harmony. "It is all math," Giftos says. "Everything has to balance." The gathering of materials is the largest part of the job, with even giant bouquets requiring only an hour or less to actually construct. Giftos notes the importance of knowing how long different varieties of flowers last. "I have to figure which will grow together and die together," Giftos says. "I have to estimate which flowers will open at the same time." He usually chooses stems "at the break." This means stems are no longer buds, but are just beginning to open.
Giftos starts with an internal skeleton of branches or greenery like forsythia, rhododendron, magnolia, willow or dogwood. Occasionally, he will choose to use only branches such as quince, apple or forsythia, but most often he adds flowers such as tulips, roses, peonies or lilies. He starts and finishes with one type of flower before moving on to the next. Giftos warns, "If you stuff flowers into a bouquet, you can't see individual stems. You must give flowers room to breathe and grow."
Giftos likens his work of mixing, contrasting and blending colors in his arrangements to that of a painter experimenting with pigment on a palette. The same essentials of color, proportion, texture and scale that govern the still lifes of floral painters speak to him. He finds inspiration from the fluorescent yellow sunflowers of Van Gogh, Monet's misty pale water lilies and the still life paintings of late sixteenth-century Dutch painters whose radiant blooms seem to burst with life.
Giftos has presented his unique methods of floral design and his tricks that save time, money and frustration on Martha Stewart Living and The Oprah Winfrey Show. The Columbia Museum of Art's program will present similar demonstrations and is open to professional floral designers as well as those seeking the basics of creating elegant, beautiful floral art. Fresh cut flowers are something that everyone enjoys, and Giftos hopes to encourage others to create their own stunning table arrangements, whether casual or formal, for holidays or everyday.
For further information call the Museum at 803/799-2810 or at (www.colmusart.org).
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