Galleries: “Elements with Enid” Exhibits

Browse our photo galleries of the “Elements with Enid” exhibits, featuring gorgeous Texas A&M University Horticulture 453 Floral Art student projects alongside 90-some Enid Collins bags on loan from the Collection. Each installation was organized around one floral design element: Line, Form, Space, Size, Fragrance, Color, Pattern or Texture.

First, a Primer on the “Elements” of Floral Art

Texas A&M University Benz School of Floral Design explains the difference between an ordinary display of flowers and floral art this way. When we put flowers in a vase or pot without thinking much about it, the result may please us, because flowers are pleasing. But if we arrange those flowers by making deliberate decisions guided by core design principles and elements, we transform them into art.

The elements of design are part of a visual artist’s basic toolkit. Unlike design principles, which operate as fundamental rules about how a design is organized, elements refer to the various characteristics of the design themselves. Far from arbitrary and more than mere staples, design elements serve as the basic visual “ingredients” that artists use to create work that expresses ideas with clarity, quality and personality. Artists who have mastered the elements make informed, deliberate choices about how to use them. Their choices determine what the work becomes, and distinguish the artist’s unique style.

The students learned these floral fundamentals by analyzing Enid’s handbags to figure out and think about the choices she made when creating a design. To practice what they’d learned, they then created their own box bags and large-scale projects, presented in the “Elements with Enid” exhibition. Browse their extraordinary work––and Enid’s, of course––below.