My personal journey to becoming a botanical artist

At my first show in 2023, I learned a TON. I learned is it true that people admiring your work, turning to you and saying “Your work is so beautiful!” is code for, “I am not going to purchase something, but don’t want you to feel bad.” I learned that some shoppers didn’t understand that my work was not living flowers, and were shocked at my prices. And I learned that making paper flowers is just unusual enough that everyone seemed to want to understand how on earth I got into this. While the route was hardly direct, my love of flowers and making things converged.

Early Days of Paper Flowers

My first paper specimen was actually a mushroom, back in about 2014, and I made it for fun, with no instructions and no references – I had just folded a piece of paper absentmindedly, and to me it resembled mushroom gills so I went with it. By chance, the blog Design*Sponge featured an amazing paper mushroom tutorial by Kate Alarcon of the Cobra Lily not long afterwards, and I became obsessed at the idea that there were artists out there creating incredibly realistic paper specimens.

As social media and blogs (RIP Google Reader) began to really take over, I started to notice new books from artists about paper flowers, and began a hobby collection – The Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers by Livia Cetti, (which Amazon tells me I purchased in May of 2014!!), then Paper to Petal by Rebecca Thuss, before getting hold of the books which absolutely blew my mind: The Fine Art of Paper Flowers by Tiffanie Turner, Paper Flower Art by Jessie Chui, and Uncommon Paper Flowers by Kate Alarcon. Once I reached this point, my paper flower hobby had morphed into something more intense.

Paper Flowers: My first Wedding

Around this time, my sister got engaged. Almost in the same phone call as I yelled congratulations, I asked her to trust me to make the paper flowers for her wedding. Not having any idea what she was signing up for, she agreed.

Her wedding was planned for May 2020, but Covid had other plans, and the wedding was delayed – a good thing for me, because I was falling behind making hundreds of paper flowers in the evenings while working a full time job as an architect with a 2 hour (or longer) commute! The extra time before the wedding gave me time to practice, produce, and eventually arrange more than 40 stems into her bouquet, 60 into bridesmaid bouquets, and fashion 8 boutonnieres and corsages.

Rather than produce hundreds more stems for table centerpieces, we opted instead for a specimen-style option. The guests loved them, and I got to experiment with even more species and colors of flowers and mushrooms.

Going to Paper Art full time

In early 2022, our family was hit with the first of a series of life changes: my son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and celiac disease. Suddenly my long commute was much worse than an annoyance, and the high level of daily communication with his school made it harder and harder for me to focus on my work. I started to look at our budget and wonder if I could make the leap to being a floral artist working for myself, to give me the flexibility to be there for my son. By that summer we had made the big decision to relocate to Charlottesville, to be closer to my retired parents and allow me to leave my 9-5 job.

The path to starting a new business is never 100% linear, and as I continue to grow and develop what Jenn Heller Studio serves up, one thing has remained at the center: always, with flowers! (and sometimes mushrooms). The next chapter is one I am literally digging into right now, and I look forward to sharing with you the fruits of my labors.

Always with flowers,