Community members crowd around a painting and floral design at Art In Bloom in Skull City Studio over the weekend. Photo by Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — The first annual collaborative art show between Windward Blooms and Skull City Studio, “Art In Bloom: A Celebration of Imagination, Color, Nature & Creativity,” was held in the studio over the weekend.

The show, which was held from Friday through Sunday, featured 12 paintings and corresponding floral sculptures created by local artists, according to Windward Blooms owner Misha Van Mecl.

“Art In Bloom is done across the country, but it’s still a new concept to many people,” Van Mecl said. “I do think, once they do this once, they realize how cool this is! Artists from the local area were asked to loan us a painting with floral themes in it. The name of a floral designer was then randomly selected from a hat, to create a piece to pair with it.”

Skull City Studio owner Pang Tubhirun first heard about the Art In Bloom concept from Van Mecl in April, when she saw Van Mecl creating a floral design for the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts’ annual Art In Bloom show. That show, which Van Mecl has now participated in two years-in-a-row, assigns submitted paintings to floral designers who have a similar artistic style to the paintings. Van Mecl and Tubhirun decided that picking unexpected pairings between paintings and designers would make the show more interesting for its participants.

For at least one of the designers, that was certainly the case.

Windward Blooms owner Misha Van Mecl, left, welcomes attendees of the Art In Bloom show at Skull City Studio over the weekend. Photo by Tabitha Johnston

“I wasn’t sure I could really pull it off, but it was so much fun,” said Hamilton, Va.-based flower gardener and floral designer Leah Foster, as she gazed at the floral arrangement she had created, which perfectly reflected the moody painting it was paired with. “It was so interesting to do. It got me out of my head for a while. I’d love to do it again.”

Fellow participant and Shepherd University painting professor Sonya Evanisko agreed with her.

“I did both artwork and a floral design — I think I was the only person to do both parts,” Evanisko said, mentioning she submitted a painting for the show that had only been shown publicly once before. “The artwork part was easy, because I already make a lot of art that is inspired by my love of gardening. I love painting botanical forms.”

Evanisko said the difficulty, for her, lay in creating a floral design for the funky painting she was randomly assigned.

“The random pairing between artwork and floral designers was so challenging, because you have to find a way to capture the essence of the artwork,” Evanisko said, mentioning the floral designers were given three weeks to plan out their contributions. “I had a pretty complex piece, that I toiled over for about two weeks, until I realized that I shouldn’t do a literal interpretation of it. When I looked at the underlying aspects of the art, I looked at the composition and the structure and the movements and created a design that would give me the movement and color and shapes that could be seen in the painting. It was an interesting challenge.”

Black Mountain Roasters owners Javier Montenegro, left, and Kat Montenegro serve up floral-themed drinks at Art In Bloom during the gallery’s artist reception. Photo by Tabitha Johnston

According to Tubhirun, one other aspect was added to the event, which is not held at other Art In Bloom shows.

“My husband, like me, is an artist, so we’re always doing art and my daughter is always doing art with us. She’s been wanting to have an art show, so we decided to include some kids in the show,” Tubhirun said, mentioning their work was displayed separately from the rest, at the front of the studio. “Some of the artists’ kids, like mine, wanted to get involved. They submitted work. One of the florists’ daughters has her own floral design up front, with them.”

Van Mecl said she was thrilled by how the event had turned out. Plans for turning Art In Bloom into an annual event at Skull City Studio, during the month of July, are already in the works.

“The timing, with it taking place at the same time as the Contemporary American Theater Festival, was fantastic,” Van Mecl said. “It worked really well, to target it opening at a time when a lot of the arts are happening in Shepherdstown.”

Skull City Studio owner Pang Tubhirun, left, shares a moment with Windward Blooms owner Misha Van Mecl at their Art In Bloom collaborative show this weekend. Photo by Tabitha Johnston