Pandemic Flowers

3 months after lockdown lifted, a so-called normal life is still stuck in somewhere unknown. The word ‘pandemic’ is from the Greek word all+people, according to the dictionary on Google. I’d never used the word ’pandemic’ this often, as well as ‘quarantine’ or ‘furlough’ or putting ‘sanitise’ in front of as many nouns as possible.

I don’t need to describe how surreal it is at the moment, everybody feels it that we probably can’t call its surreal anymore. The idea behind this “Pandemic Flowers“ came from a lonely overground (any transportation ) carriage that used to be full of people. The flower sculpture took over empty seats, mimicking, traveling alone. The moss island was inspired by just a single quote from John Donne’s “No man is an island“ that I learned and got interested in when I binge-watching Downton Abbey during the lockdown. It seems ironically fitted that “No man is an island“ with this '‘all+people pandemic’, the best solution is isolation. Does that mean we all still need to be an island sometimes? or learn to be one? Does the continent have its limit?

Photos by Fang-Yu Cho

High Summer/ 仲夏

It was weeks after lockdown lifted, temperature was still soaring, flowers suddenly become available again that I was almost overwhelmed by the selections I came across at the market.

The idea was simple, I saw this petit, jewel-like watermelon in the farmer’s market on one Saturday. Yes, most definitely I’d like to have the taste of watermelon right now! The lady at the stall kindly reminded me its £6.5 each. I knocked every single ones to make sure the one I picked had the most perfect echo. (That was a bad example, please do not do this if you can resist. Knocking the watermelon is just a thing we do in Taiwan, you want to find the one with a hollow but kind of bouncy sound, that means its juicy inside. )

In lockdown I’ve become a scavenger, I collected whatever I can find to make arrangements or just something for the table. In this case, there’s no way I was going to throw that shell away, it’s a perfect vessel for making a Summery arrangement. It’s watertight! It’s Red!

I used Dahlia labyrinth, wild Fennel, wild Mint (literally pulled out from the crack between the tiles) , Crocosmia, Lily (I forgot its black mamba or dark secret) and Ricinus. The photograph was taken by @chofangyufoto that I’ve secretly admired her works for a very long time…We found out we actually live in the same area, London is small sometimes.

我偷偷在instgram上搭訕老桌 @chofangyufoto, 她一口答應要來幫我拍照。我們約在Hilly Field，推著阿婆推車抱著西瓜，兩個人氣喘吁吁地爬上坡。

主要就是想要一個夏天的顏色，西瓜的顏色。Dahlia labyrinth 給我一種西瓜肉透心涼的感覺。我發現我很少用紅色，但是今天受到了西瓜的啟發。

那天風很大，在山坡上花被吹得亂七八糟。老桌要我現場做一個，我邊做邊聊她一邊幫我拍照。這是跟新朋友第一次見面的好活動。老桌之後給我看的照片讓我瞠目結舌，說真的照片比本人美。我們留了一些花在草地上，花束送給老桌，西瓜我最後還是丟掉了。