house plant

WHAT DO YOU DO?

OndineABotantBasedDesignStudio

I am sure many of you have watched Ondine morph and evolve over the past three years unwed to a specific trade or title. Wearing a few too many hats. It’s irritating I know. Bad for business, most definitely. When I catch fright at the question, “what do you do?,” I know it’s time to get my story straight.

I was one of the lucky ones and knew I wanted to be an artist as soon as I left the womb and landed in my mother’s hands. Hands so capable of creation sometimes I think she created my hands just to make through me. A seamstress, a jeweler, an assemblage sculptor, a painter, and a poet. So the apple fell. I have bounced around medium to medium my entire existence and enjoy bouncing. I have always learned with my hands and have always wanted to keep learning. Organic material however seems to be my constant. And one that I know I will keep learning from.

My first job beyond my three months as an ice cream scooper was working for a gardener. I spent eight seasons gardening and each season brought new knowledge and new plants and blooms to venerate.

Ondine began as a need to bring creation into a career. It began as a desire to tell a story. A desire to create sacred space. A desire to cultivate marvel and harvest presence. And a desire to grow. Over the past three years these worlds, my art background and my botanical background have morphed into one to define the finally honed but ever evolving Ondine.

WE ARE A BOTANY-BASED DESIGN STUDIO. —And by we I mean myself and hopefully my future team of employees when I make it big but for now just a facade/manifesting of this business of mine being bigger than myself— We offer floral design and styling for events, accounts and photoshoots in Seattle and beyond. As well as interior plant design and styling for residential and commercial spaces. We bring the outside in.

And I am so damn grateful for the work that we do.


MY ANGEL WING BEGONIA

Angel Wing Begonia, Wandering Jew, Staghorn Fern Kokedama

Angel Wing Begonia, Wandering Jew, Staghorn Fern Kokedama

As you may have heard I am in the midst of a transition. Uprooting from the sagebrush and tumbleweeds of Bend, OR to be amongst the moss clad branches and blackberry brambles on Bainbridge Island, WA. I have come to know just how much this dusty high desert soil can nourish. Perhaps it's not the land as much as its people that have helped me grow.

 One of those lovely people has gifted me an arm from her prosperous Angel Wing Begonia. Her Angel Wing has quadrupled in size and split off into mason jars scattered across town. I will hold this one dear. A reminder of its OG Angel, the only girl who brings the fixings for deviled eggs to the park (paprika and all) and makes them right before you on her picnic blanket. The woman who rips down the ski slop in a prom dress, and demands you get the hot pink rubber clogs at your favorite thrift store.

This Angel Wing is also a reminder, like many propagated plants, that not only will I be okay without earth beneath me, I can grow roots wading in water.