Giant flower sculptures bloom on Northeastern's campus

It was graduation day, and students in caps and gowns posed by the Northeastern University sign on Krentzman Quad. Behind them towered five giant flowers. Each stalk was fifteen feet high, topped by puffy, iridescent blooms that stood out against the gray stone buildings ringing the quad.

The installation, by the Cambridge artist Cicely Carew, is called “Rooted.” The artworks were commissioned as part of Northeastern’s ongoing public art initiative, which was launched in 2014.

“The president wanted to change this sterile environment into something that was more luscious and alive and inviting to people,” Carew said. “This particular area needs a lot more color, and that was the directive.”

Though they appear light and fluffy, the flower-like sculptures are in fact made of industrial gardening materials like aluminum screen mesh and lattice. Carew bent and fused the metal parts into huge, undulating puffs painted in psychedelic hues. They’re similar to some of the artist’s previous sculptures, which were designed to be shown indoors.

“In my studio, they're much more airy, ethereal, not totally always tightly bound together,” Carew said.

She decided to tighten up the flowers’ crowns to strengthen them against the elements.

“I'm thinking a lot about what might come to destroy this thing," the artist said. "It's not a wonderful way to plan for work, but it was a really interesting challenge to take on.”

Carew said she was collaborating with Northeastern’s horticulture department to design the landscape around the sculpture. She hoped new plant life would integrate with the installation over the course of its three to five year tenure on the quad.

“I envision, right now, little blooms, some other flowers, that are going to grow around the base of these stems,” Carew, referring to the tall metal “stalks” of the flowers. “And then vines, I think it's going to be trumpet vines. So those are really beautiful and they're also tenacious. So it will wrap itself up and around and create its own life and find its own habitat here.”

The sculptures were installed at the end of April, during the period when dozens of students were arrested at a pro-Palestinian encampment on Northeastern’s campus.

“There was a bit of cognitive dissonance that I had to embrace to do this in this time,” said Carew, who recalled hearing about the arrests while she was working on the installation.

“I think a lot about what my work can do in the context of liberation and being a force of something that's life affirming and life giving,” she said. “So I weave these things, I'm making these things, and they are, to me, just prayers for something better, for the courage for us to stay enchanted with life. That takes courage, to not completely check out, drop out, stay silent, or opt for the way that we can so easily separate ourselves from one another.”