BLOOMING LOVELY

To call Janice Lee Ripley a florist would be to do her a disservice, though she for her own part is unconcerned at the moniker. But what the New York native can do with flowers often has more to do with fine art and sculpture than it does mere arrangement.

The artistry that Janice brings to the world of growing things reflects her background – from growing up with a fascination for the local flora, to studying fine art first in New York and then in San Francisco, where she got her Masters at the San Francisco Art Institute, to setting up her own boutique jewellery company, Camenae. It was the latter that brought her to Bali, where she worked with local artisans to create her modern meets primitivist hybrid designs. These delicate and highly decorative pieces, using unconventional materials like slate and scraps of inscribed lontar palm leave manuscript alongside silver and other precious materials, are in some ways the grounding for what she does with flowers. Whether a simple posy or large scale sculptural piece or an ingenious floating flower globe, Bloomz designs are carefully composed objets where colour, texture and form are all taken into consideration.

Janice works with the abundant varieties of tropical flora available on the island wherever possible, occasionally bringing in blooms from Java and even Europe should a client have a particular requirement. Guests at Jimbaran and Kandara will probably already encountered her floral installations, which included a full size flower sculpture in the shape of a Christmas tree.