As I look back on 2012, I am amazed at all that I have learned. I am even more blown away by how much I have learned in the first 9 days of 2013. When I chose to study this past year, I believed somehow that I would learn to be someone else; more like someone better than me. This was a frustrating and enlightening experience. I clearly remember standing at my design table after returning from studying with the amazing Ariella Chezar and thinking this arrangement does not look like Ariella. The design in actuality sucked, MY piece did not look like hers. My attempt to create like someone else failed miserably. This happened because I was denying my own intuition. The piece did not look like Ariella and it did not look like Holly. A voice inside of me said, “you are not Ariella, you are Holly, design as you know you should, this voice said, you have an intuitive voice that tells you where to place those flowers, Holly listen to your intuitive voice.” I ripped the design apart and did what my heat and my voice told me to do.  Needless to say I loved the new piece I created. This realization was one of my most beautiful epiphanies as a designer, in actuality this moment is what made me a better designer, it was the very reason I needed to study this year. I need to celebrate me, we need to celebrate our own intuitive voice. It is my opinion, and my opinion only, that amazing floral designers design by an intuitive voice. They do not have a remembered pattern, or even a definite plan, they let the art flow from them, they let the flowers speak to them, and they let a piece of art be born.

This summer I was asked by a very influential floral designer, from the most prestigious flower shop in this country to define my style. “What is your style,” she asked. In that moment I was anguished because I did not have an answer for her. In actuality I was afraid to say to her that I am an intuitive designer.  What this means to me is this, I don’t practice any one kind of style; I don’t just do organic, or contemporary, or modern. What it means is that I approach all types of design by listening to my inner voice. I do not follow a learned, regimented, or certified pattern.  In the last 9 days I have had the incredible pleasure of speaking to numerous designers from across the country. These designers have helped me finalize in my mind who I am, not only as a designer, but how I will proceed as a teacher. Thank you to the many people I have spoken to this week (like maybe 50 people) for helping me to know who I am. Each one of us holds a special magic key to a design that no one else has. If we are all creating as individual artists and not copying each other, but learning from each other. If we all approach each design with the ability or the willingness to listen to our intuitive voice, some of the finest designers in the country will be born.

Photography by Julie Massie