Artist Lisa Waud brings ‘silliness and joy’ to ‘Portrait’ flower art installation
“Portrait” is the third and final art installation of Lisa Waud’s residency at the Boyer Campbell building in Detroit’s Milwaukee Junction neighborhood.
WDET host Ryan Patrick Hooper wearing a flower headdress created by artist Lisa Waud at her "Portrait" art installation at the Boyer Campbell building in Detroit on June 26, 2024.
Detroit botanical artist Lisa Waud is wrapping up her residency this weekend with “Portrait,” an interactive flower installation on the ground floor of Detroit’s historic Boyer Campbell factory at 6532 Saint Antoine in the Milwaukee Junction neighborhood.
“Portrait” is an interactive installation designed for “silliness and joy,” inviting visitors to take photos and selfies underneath towering flower headdresses that Waud has created over the past several weeks.
The installation is only open to the public for two days — Friday from 5-8 p.m. and Saturday from noon-7 p.m.
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Tickets are $20 per person and available via Waud’s website. Children under 10 are allowed in for free.
When it comes to the big picture of her artistic statement, Waud writes that it’s about celebrating “individuality and the democratization of royalty.”
It follows two other projects that Waud has helmed as part of her residency at the Boyer Campbell factory. “Petrichor” was a sensory-heavy experience bringing the smell of rain hitting dirt and the sensation of green, lush grass taking over the 16,000 square foot interior ground floor of the factory.
Related: Artist Lisa Waud brings the outdoors indoors in ‘Petrichor’ botanical art installation
“Memory Forest” was another immersive installation where Waud recreated a forest from memory in a future where wooded habitats have vanished. The materials she used were recycled.
Waud’s three-project residency in Detroit follows in the footsteps of her popular 2015 installation “Flower House,” which filled an abandoned Detroit house with flowers in a similar fashion and created a visual splash around the globe.
In 2021, Waud took part in a residency in Port Austin focused on bringing arts tourism to the tip of Michigan’s thumb. That project was titled “Party Store,” a stunning conversion of a former party store into an immersive botanical installation with locally sourced, fresh-cut flowers — “shelves covered, coolers stuffed, counters coated with a floral veneer,” Waud said.
Related: Detroit artist Lisa Waud brings immersive floral installation to Port Austin
Check out photos from our media preview of “Portrait” in the gallery below.
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