Hollie Ryan is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa.

I used to buy flowers like crazy. I wanted them in vases all around me all the time – admiring them for their colour, their form, their meanings and stories. They reminded me of my grandmother who shamelessly picked flowers from other peoples gardens in broad daylight. She kept scissors in her car just in case. But I bought fewer and fewer flowers over time because I couldn’t bear when the petals would fall. I didn’t want constant reminders that everything dies eventually. That probably says a lot about my level of resilience, but the minute I started sculpting everlasting blooms it was a relief. Now, just before the stems brown and the petals wilt I pull each flower to pieces to study the shape and contours of every part and model them to keep.

My work is an examination of how to preserve temporary pleasures. How hard materials like unyielding glass and spiked metal wire can convey delicate emphemeral structures. It considers the gentle sentimentality we attach to flowers and plants and challenges the fragility and fleetingness of nature. I also draw deep inspiration from historical beaded funerary ornaments from 19th Century France, Germany and Italy.

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The name Hark carries over from a previous 5 year jewellery making project and from my time as a tutor at Studio One Toi Tū in Ponsonby. Hark was suggested to me by an almost mute man at a BBQ in Havelock North. It’s a long story considering he didn’t have much to say.