Rachel Henry – Australia

Rosa Synthesis

Category: Modern

Description

At first glance, it may seem that these are beautiful flowers, encased in plastic to protect, maintain their beauty and give longevity however; my inspiration for this piece was how plastic is now an environmental issue therefore this piece is actually an example of how manmade, unsustainable waste material is suffocating our natural beauty. The flowers will eventually disintegrate while the plastic will remain forever…

Using real flowers in a headpiece has intrigued me for a while and the use of plastic was a perfect way to fuse natural and synthetic / manmade materials. Using laminating technology allowed me to use plastic with purpose to create this piece.

I chose Hibiscus flowers which I adore and carefully separated the petals and stamens. I laminated each individual piece and reconstructed the flowers to create ‘Rosa Synthesis’, my competition entry.

Materials

• Real, fresh hibiscus flowers
• Laminating pouches
• Laminator
• Uhu glue
• Standard millinery wire
• Black tulle
• Elastic & Comb

Techniques

• Laminating of fresh flower petals
• Flower reconstruction of individual laminated flower petals
• Wire work