Sleepy Roosevelt Island is not the typical locale for the season’s hottest art opening, but leave it to artist CJ Hendry to change that. Known for her photo-realistic drawings and playful, monumental installations, Hendry has turned the southern tip of the island into a colorful faux “Flower Market”—happening this weekend only.
Visitors are invited to meander through a 120-foot by 40-foot greenhouse filled with 100,000 plush flowers on the lawn of FDR Four Freedoms State Park. You’ll find pink peonies, bright sunflowers, blush- and lavender-hued dahlias, red and yellow roses, daffodils, lilies, and more. Every visitor gets to pluck their first flower for free, and you can buy more for $5 each (and trust us, you will want to buy more).
"We strive to build these fantastical, artificial environments to subvert viewer expectations," says Hendry. "Obviously, the flowers we have created are plush; they’re not real, but by creating them on a grand scale, we can evoke a feeling beyond the singular. I enjoy bringing a childlike lens to my exhibitions, which is where the element of plush came from. You just see them and instinctually want to touch and hold them."
Hendry collaborated with Clé de Peau Beauté to create the exhibition, which is inspired by the botanicals used in the global beauty brand’s products—particularly the radiant lily used in Clé de Peau Beauté’s Serum (of which you get a sample if you buy additional flowers). Other flowers take inspiration from the Roosevelt family: yellow roses for Eleanor Roosevelt, tulips as a nod to their Dutch heritage, peonies since they were the signature flower of the Roosevelt farm.
Hendry also created 12 original drawings of the plush blooms for the exhibit, which are on display in the greenhouse alongside the flowers. They will be available for sale after the Flower Market closes, at 7 p.m. on September 15.
If you can’t make it to Roosevelt Island this weekend, you can still experience a taste of the flower power magic at the Nordstrom flagship on 57th Street in Manhattan, where a pop-up plush flower pushcart will be holding court from September 16-22. Visitors will receive a free plush radiant lily with any Clé de Peau Beauté purchase.
“When the architect Louis Kahn designed this memorial, he said, ‘The garden is somehow a personal kind of control of nature.’ A lot of my work, and in this exhibition especially, is about manipulating my environments and building a space that takes participants out of their ordinary,” says Hendry. “I hope Flower Market inspires joy and beauty well after the greenhouse is empty, every time we see flowers—plush or otherwise.”
The exhibition is free and open to the public from September 13-15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The best way to get there is to take the F train or the Roosevelt Island Tram from 59th Street and Second Avenue.
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