The completed design: making flowers into fire
F loral designer Kaori Imaizumi is preparing for a museum exhibition this month, as she has every spring since she opened her flower shop in the neighborhood in 2006.
She’s participating once again in “Bouquets to Art,” the annual extravaganza in which floral arrangements interpret and comment upon works of art in the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park.
For the previous three years, Imaizumi has worked with paintings and sculpture — including, in 2009, an abundant arrangement of springtime flowers juxtaposed with Albert Bierstadt’s 1875 painting, “California Spring.” But this year she has taken on something more unusual: the massive mantelpiece by Herter Brothers created for the 50-room Thurlow Lodge in Menlo Park.
“It’s huge,” she says. “But I wanted to make something different.” And at this show, since she’s not trying to please a customer, she says, “I can make what I want to make. I can show my style.”
As she ponders how to interpret a wall-size oak and marble mantelpiece, she says: “It’s a fireplace. I’m thinking maybe to make a fire.”
Imaizumi says the exhibition presents special practical challenges. “It’s hard to maintain the freshness,” she says. “It’s unexpectedly hot. Flowers die so fast — much faster than usual.” She visits every day to add water and fresh flowers.
Imaizumi grew up in Japan and for many years was a flight attendant on international routes for Japan Air Lines. When her husband’s business took them to New York in 1997, she had time to learn to arrange flowers, which she had loved since she was a child. In 2000 they moved to San Francisco. She continued her studies, eventually earning her certification.
“My design is contemporary East-meets-West — not all European, not all Asian,” she says.
When she decided to open a shop, she wanted something near the neighborhood school her son attends. She found a small space with affordable rent on Sutter Street, near Steiner, and opened Blooming Floral Design in 2006. She has since moved a few doors down the block to 2120 Sutter.
“It’s a very local business,” she says, with 80 percent of her customers coming from the neighborhood, many from the apartment buildings she sees out her window.
“If I were on Fillmore, I would have already left,” she says, given the higher rents. “A lot of flower shops have closed in the last year.” Instead, she’s preparing for her annual museum exhibition. “Bouquets to Art” runs from April 20 to 24 at the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park.
Filed under: Art & Design, Home & Garden, Locals
