Love & Art

Yesterday, I viewed The Kimbell's new exhibit Love & Art in Renaissance Italy. It wasn't the typical exhibit with just paintings. Instead, the collection included works of art that were given to commemorate special life events. Rather than landscape paintings, the collection opened with portraits of different brides and grooms. In addition to the portraits, other objects of art, like wedding chests, were given as dowries. But among the most ornate in the collection were the trays and bowls that were given to commemorate births. Whole scenes from the Bible might be depicted in the bottom of a bowl. And the colors were breathtaking in spite of being painted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

This idea of color brightening our lives, and making our greatest life moments even greater, stuck with me. Not being an artist, I thought about how I could add some more color to my life. Immediately, the idea of flowers came to mind.

When I used to watch Three's Company, I often wanted to be a florist like Janet. One trip to a local florist's shop, and I fell in love with the smell of chilled roses that wafted out each time I opened the door to the upright cooler storing the arrangements. But with zero classes on flower arranging offered at school and instead days upon days of practicing math and writing, my florist dreams vanished.

Until this Saturday afternoon.

I stopped by the local flower market and picked up a Texas dozen (make that 15) "cherry brandy" roses, complete with lots of leaves and thorns and some withered petals, all of which needed to be removed. I remembered a simple arrangement that I had seen made at a flower show last spring and decided to mimic it, though technically the bouquet is supposed to be sticking at a weirder angle in the vase than I saw fit to lean it.

Voila! Instant color for my kitchen and den.

But the fun didn't stop there. I had been wanting to try a recipe I found at Christmas for red velvet whoopie pies. So I made them this afternoon for my writers' group. Although I think the original chocolate whoopie pies are better, this is a fun take on an old favorite.


So go on and have yourself a little fun with color!