I'm Katie Lila I make art displays out of fresh cut flowers.

Wow, this is looking so fabulous.

Flowers really are nature's art and I love using them as my medium.

So fun.

Like these little fantasy flower worlds that people can interact with.

Oh my gosh, this is stunning.

I want this for my bedroom wall.

It's hard to be around flowers without smiling.

I love looking at something and being like, oh, how can we make that into something that could be in a flower installation?

Oh my goodness.

Look at those colors.

(acoustic guitar strums) Follow the Blooms on KSPS PBS is proudly supported by Skyline Flowers Wholesale.

I am so excited.

We're here at Spark Central, and I am going to show them my designs that were created for their Big Spark Salon fundraiser, This organization does amazing things for the community.

Can't wait to see what they're doing and get this thing started.

I'm so excited about the project.

Yeah.

Me too.

I cannot wait to hear what you're thinking right now.

Yeah, I've got all sorts of ideas bubbling up.

I'm thinking a book.

I have a wall, with a book collage on it of open books.

I love that.

Yeah, I think that fits perfectly with the event, with the literary theme running through, because our mission is so like literature and literacy centric.

So Spark Central ignites the creativity, innovation and imagination necessary to break barriers like cost, confidence and access for youth in Spokane, Washington.

we raise about a third of our annual operating budget with Spark Salon.

This is an annual fundraiser.

It's going to be a big auction night.

Live auctions, silent auction.

Big dinner.

Hundreds of people, all coming together to support Spark.

I'm really hoping our pieces will be the highlight of the night.

Have you ever created anything at this scale with books before?

Totally, no.

Okay, I love it.

We're just gonna experiment.

Katie is I think she's the manifestation of the innovation in our mission for spark.

But she also, I feel like has that translation between nature and people.

She has a respect for both of those that I think is so important in our community in Spokane and for the youth we work with.

But she really goes above and beyond to communicate and care.

With every event.

Really, I try to curate it to the space, the people, the cause.

You know, I'm definitely not a one trick pony.

I'm kind of like, let's do a new trick every time.

To the chagrin of all of my team, who was like, what are we doing?

But, yeah, I love trying new things.

I love pushing myself.

I love looking at something and being like, how could we make that into something that could be in a flower installation?

Right?

Okay.

These are the beautiful book planters, and they look simple, but they are very complex, actually.

They've got these poles drilled down through the middle, and then they've got this fun insert on top where you can stick your favorite part.

These are also auction items for the silent auction.

So, I've got a lot of good buzz on them.

People are super excited.

The trick with flowers, ephemeral flowers is to make art that lasts, right?

Something that someone could hold on to for an auction.

So, I had this, you know, saw online this big collage board, which is novel books kind of flapped open.

And I loved the canvas that made.

I'm hoping Vanessa is going to paint.

She's this amazing muralist with her work here in Spokane.

You know, with my style gets a lot of very abstract, floral landscapes and floral scapes.

I mean, there's a kind of a fusion of the two.

Okay, well here we go.

Okay, I believe I know this texture will do to us.

Fun fact.

These were all from a thrift outlet.

So they're rescued, And, upcycled.

You know I'm dying to paint something on here.

Yes.

Do you want to put a mark on?

I totally want to put a mark ono Lets do it.

I'll you start a line and I'll finish it.

outline here.

fill it in, Sounds like my skill level.

I need more shapes.

Like, it's really.

That's why with, my painting, I try to keep it very, flexible.

Okay?

This is so therapeutic.

Everyone needs to paint a book.

(laughter) Like, you can read the book and then paint the book.

Honestly!

Vanessa, this is amazing.

I wish I could stay all day and be here in this beautiful space with you.

I gotta go and finish the book stands.

And I got to pick up flowers at the farm, I'll see you at the auction.

Sounds great.

Couple days.

Okay.

Good Luck.

Hey, I'll keep painting.

All in a day's work.

(guitar music) Here at Floriography Farm with Sarah.

I want to source locally sustainable flowers.

So I chose tulips because I thought it would be this great message of hope and symbol of coming into a new season.

I really hope Sarah can work her magic.

Hey, Sarah.

Look at those beauties.

Nice work.

Girl.

Good to see you, too.

Yeah.

I know it's early in the season, and, you know, it's hard.

Yeah, I I would love to get whatever I can from your tulips.

And you've got some growing and and I know that forsythia is, like, crossing our fingers.

Yeah.

Because we're we're planning to make the forsythia, just waterfall down the stairs in the library, and then these will all be on the stage.

We're going to make a little meadow scene around the little libraries just all seems to be reds and pinks right now.

Sure.

So it's reds and pinks.

Popping up first.

Nature says red and pink, Okay.

These look awesome.

I know you said you already have pulled them up.

Oh, these are some of the red ones.

That we got going in time.

Those are beautiful.

What's this one called?

Rococo.

Rococo tulip.

So taking the whole bulb out gives you a pause button essentially exact on the two.

It still has its food source.

Tulips have everything they need That's awesome.

Just carry it with them.

Yes.

Cool.

Okay, well, I'm going to be back to pick up all the flowers, and, we'll just cross the fingers that the everything keeps rolling on.

I really feel like.

The pressure is on for.

This one.

It's a three hundred person event.

They're all coming to the auction and dinner.

My work is going to be interspersed throughout the whole event.

Okay.

Install day for anyone that's ever done event work.

You know, it's just nuts (guitar music) My install team is amazing.

I love them.

I could not do it without them.

I've got my daughter, Ava.

She's a champion.

Ava Fern.

And then we got Avo Brook.

She's my go to girl for design, and she's always got a good eye for it.

Ruby.

Also, they just jump in action and fill in all the the weird requests.

And then, Sierra, my main girl.

Yeah, she's kind of like my brain outside of my brain.

(guitar music) okay.

All right.

Yeah, I think that looks great.

Raising.

Oh my goodness.

Look at this thing.

Oh, Vanessa.

Look at these cuties, I'm just kind of playing with some of these designs here.

I kind of like some up, some over.

This reminds me of a little love letter happening.

Same flowers from Snapdragon Flower farms.

Beth... local flowers.

And she knows exactly when to cut them.

And I have totally fallen in love with the books and dried flowers.

I think it's very something about it feels just like a perfect blend.

books and flowers.

That was our goal, right.

And I think it turned out amazing.

I love how the Collage board turned out.

I love it.

It's fabulous.

The book.

Planters.

I'm getting all sorts of excitement about those, people are loving them.

They're actually really cool.

The stage.

The girls totally knocked it out of the park.

There was so much going on on the stage then to be able to take the concept of framing the stage with flowers.

Was tricky.

Because we didn't want to take away or add too much chaos or clutter happening on the stage.

But framing the stage with flowers and moss and really highlighting the columns that were already there.

That worked.

Hooray!

This whole event has just shown me community supporting community.

And it's just this layering effect.

It's really beautiful.

You know, Vanessa.

Bringing in all of her love and support with building the library and then Painting the mural.

Sarah.

Just blood, sweat and tears on those tulips and daffodils and forsythia.

You know, working with Spark, all of the people that have put in so much effort.

Just this beautiful weaving of community.

Over and over.

(auctioneer) Ive got 900.

1000?

I got 1000 back here now.

1100, 1000 now 11.

1000.

1100, Now 1100. sold Bidder 183.

Thank you so much.

We're here in downtown Spokane, Washington.

It's all been recently renovated, the crown jewel being the public library.

We're creating this flower art in celebration of the library's grand opening after a recent remodel.

Sierra and I came to brainstorm in this space.

We were immediately drawn to the huge windows overlooking Spokane Falls.

Sierra had the idea to create a waterfall of flowers, repeating the falls rhythm on the main staircase at the center of the library.

We are going to need loads of flowers.

Good thing it's dahlias season.

We're on the way to Tall Grass Farms.

Dahlias are finicky.

They're a flash in the pan, right?

They're here for a minute, and then they're gone.

And Nikki and Scott know how to do it really well.

Hey, Scott.

Hey.

good to see you.

Who you all doing today?

Great.

This is Pierce.

He's my plant loving guy.

How are you doing, sir?

Yeah.

So let's go check out what you got going on.

All right.

We got a lot to see.

All right.

So, how many acres are you growing.

On here?

We own ten acres of property, but of usable growing area for Dahlias is probably an acre and a half.

You can pump a lot out of an acre and a half.

We really pack them in tight.

Conventional growers might kind of cringe at our spacing, but it seems to work quite well for us.

These are looking so beautiful.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Tell us about dahlias.

How do they grow?

What do you look for when you harvest?

So we grow our dahlias from tubers, and a tuber for a simplified explanation, think of a potato.

We plant a potato in the spring.

When you dig it up in the fall, there's a bunch more.

Same thing with dahlias.

We plant what we call our mother tuber.

In the spring we let it do its thing all year.

When we dig it up in the fall we're hoping that there's a whole bunch more tubers.

So when you want them to grow true you've got to grow them from a tuber or cutting.

Okay.

Now why are these ones shaded over here?

We have the shade tunnel over these to encourage longer stem length.

Which is what the flowers are looking for.

It makes them, it stresses the plants a little bit and makes them reach for the sun.

It's interesting.

Right?

Stress makes us grow.

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay.

You got to tell me about these little guys.

What?

What is happening here?

So these are to save your eyes.

If these dahlias were taller, you can't see the rebar when they're in there.

So when you go to bend down to pick a flower.

Bad.

Poke up in your eye.

Those are hilarious.

And they're all different.

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah.

So it's like your own little museum.

Of 3D printing.

There you go.

Scott, I love coming out here.

It's beautiful.

It's a lovely drive.

And then to see the dahlias.

I mean, the You Pick, the nursery.

You've got so many great things happening.

It's just a really I'm glad to have you guys out here.

Come see us anytime.

Yeah.

We're excited.

We got to load up these dahlias.

Right?

So many dahlias.

We have yet to see Nicki of Scott and Nicki.

She's been elusive.

We finally spot her when she comes to give me a beautiful bucket of farm fresh bouquets to give away.

I can just share these out.

That's amazing.

You're going to share?

This is my favorite thing to do in the world is give away free flowers.

If I could give away flowers.

I would huh Pierce.

To dad's dismay.

(laughter) Thank you all so much.

See you Wednesday.

Yeah.

Take care.

As we drive away from Tall Grass Farms I'm feeling elated.

I have this gigantic car stuffed full of dahlias, and it just feels like abundance.

I've always wanted large flower design to be accessible to the public.

My friend mentioned, hey, the downtown library has been closed.

It's just being opened up in August.

Through some lovely connections, figured out that they would absolutely love to have dahlias flowing down their stairs.

There's Iva.

Hey, how are you doing?

Good.

Good to see.

You.

My name is Eva Silverstone and I am an art education specialist.

Katie approached me and wanted to do this live flower installation and I said sure, why not?

And because it sounded really cool.

We've arrived here at the library.

We have our car full of dahlias.

The team is descending.

Everything feels in motion.

It feels kind of like an ant farm, right?

Everyone's moving and doing their work.

And then we see Sean pull in, with this canoe on the back of his car.

The canoe.

We're so excited.

I'm a Spokane tribal member, and I also descend from many of the regional plateau tribes from this region.

Katie, expressed that she was interested in an indigenous style canoe for her exhibition with the cascading waterfall of dahlias.

To see him come out of his car and be so full of joy and pride at his work, and everyone seeing it, just incredible.

After we determined we were making a waterfall during our sketch and design phase, Sierra jokingly mentioned, wouldn't it be great to have a canoe so people could actually tell it was a waterfall?

The image stuck and I was determined to find that canoe.

But not just any canoe.

One that held significance for Spokane.

Eva just happened to know of an indigenous canoe maker, local artist Sean Brigman.

How cool is this canoe?

I'm always amazed how the universe intertwines our lives.

Like creeks coming together, turning into streams and then to rivers.

Sean: Well, here's my thought.

I like the idea of it being on here for support, but I like the idea of it flying.

So up off the ground.

Of course, securing the canoe is the the trickiest part of this whole thing, right?

How do we get that canoe to float and look like it's going down a river?

I've been a canoe maker for about ten years.

I'd make a traditional bark sturgeon, those canoes.

And I also make a contemporary interpretation of that canoe.

So the historic bark sturgeon, those canoe is specific to the local regional plateau tribes.

And that's the canoe that makes an appearance in the exhibition today.

Well, I see my canoes as a continuity with the past, present and future.

And so with my canoes, I like to demonstrate that we're still living in this heritage today.

There's the moment of truth, right?

Yeah, we did try this before with a marker, but so the idea Is really simple.

Nothing complex about this.

My six year old could do it.

I'm just zip tie in this bad boy to the rail so that the dahlia is poking out and all its glory.

But the trick is, we have to do it 500 times.

So that's not bad.

We'll just be little glistening tubes.

It's pretty decent, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

One down, 500 to go.

Okay.

(music) We close at seven, and it's 6:10 Oh, there.

Okay.

There we are having a lovely chat.

We, you know, we've got a rhythm going, and then Eva's, like, just 45 minutes, you know?

And I look down and we still have more than half the flowers.

Right.

So I just my whole body cringe.

It's getting sunsetish out there.

And we still have lots and lots of flowers to put on.

So I underestimated our time that it would take to put these on.

So we still have so many trays of flowers left.

flowers and flowers and flowers the library closes in like 40 minutes or something.

So they're kicking us out.

You know, you gotta think of a plan.

We start going into crazy go zone where we're just, like, throwing these flowers on the wall.

And before we're like, how's large one?

How's that one?

And then we're just shoving them on the wall.

(music) We were getting right up to the close of, library open hours, and the gate for the garage was going to come down and lock them in the garage.

And so I had to say, out of here.

in a very nice way.

In a librarian sort of way.

It was a great day.

We we definitely ran out of time there at the end.

But, you know, then we were super productive the last hour.

We busted out a lot of flowers.

Okay.

So I'm excited to have everybody come tomorrow and see what they think.

You.

Okay.

We're here.

I'm here.

Sean's here.

Everyone's ready to meet him.

I'm super excited.

We worked so hard.

Couldn't really sleep.

Came this morning, and some of the flowers were all.

And so I had to revive those guys.

But I think we're ready.

And, it's the meet and greet the artists here at the library.

The public is invited.

Everybody can just interact, put up some flowers, make some buttons.

It's going to be super fun.

You know, we ran out of time at the library, and we had these big trays left of dahlias.

And what to do with the dahlias?

And then, light bulbs, another spark.

Let everybody that's coming to meet the artists play with the dahlias and put them all over the place.

Yeah.

So it was awesome today to be able to watch the visitors interact with the exhibit today.

They were provided with blooms, and then they were able to attach the blooms to the exhibition today.

And that was just, a great opportunity for everyone.

It's surreal.

It's always surreal seeing it come together.

After you've spent so many days thinking about it.

And hours building it.

It's really surreal to just be able to enjoy it.

And this one is really special because we get to share it with so many people.

It was really an honor to work with Sean Brigman on this project, and have his canoe be the shining star in the piece.

This whole work just was a beautiful collaboration between The library and Sean and his art and the public coming together, and Katie and the flower growers.

There's just so many people involved in this project and I just feel so honored to be a small part of it.

The library is a place where anyone is welcome.

All different kinds of people should have access to art.

During the reception, we had a couple of activities.

We made some buttons.

Katie and I both dried some flower petals in advance of the exhibit so that we could make flower petal pins.

And then we had little flower paper flower cutouts so people could respond to the question, what makes you bloom?

What makes you happy?

Being able to photograph an event like this is so gratifying for me.

One of the lovely things about being a photographer is capturing that joy and excitement.

And I saw that here tonight.

Hearing what people said and their connection and, you know, the stories about their grandmother grew dahlias and their sister in law that's starting a dahlia farm.

And, you know, all of these, connections.

So I feel just full.

Thanks for flowering with us today as we created with these locally grown dahlias by Scott and Nicky at Tall Grass Farms, adorned Sean's handcraft Salish Sturgeon nose canoe and celebrated this gorgeous renovated downtown library.

Flowers give us a sense of place and a sense of connection.

See you next time on Follow the Blooms.

(acoustic guitar strums) Follow the Blooms on KSPS PBS is proudly supported by Skyline Flowers Wholesale.