Bloomin’ good art Biennial flower show reimagines gallery collection Behind the scenes
By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 6:29 PM CDT Thursday, Apr. 16, 2026 Last Modified: 11:45 AM CDT Friday, Apr. 17, 2026 Updates

Karen Lischka and her adult daughters, Lauren Hall and Maddie Lischka, are figuring out how to transform hydrangeas into boobs.

They are among the more than 100 professional and amateur florists who will be interpreting 95 artworks from WAG-Qaumajuq’s permanent collection for this weekend’s Art in Bloom, a biennial show presented by the Associates of the WAG and Petals West that features fresh floral displays inspired by art in the gallery’s collection.

Pieces by Wanda Koop, Bîstyek, Marcel Dzama, Robert Houle and Abraham Anghik Ruben, to name a few, are among those getting the floral treatment.

For their installation, Lischka and her daughters have decided to riff on Phyllis Green’s iconic Boob Tree. The cheeky 1975 sculpture is exactly what it sounds like: a tree whose crown is composed entirely of bright pink crocheted breasts.

The Minneapolis-born, Winnipeg-raised Green created Boob Tree for an exhibition at the WAG that year called Woman as Viewer, a feminist response to a concurrent show at the gallery commemorating International Women’s Year that featured mostly male artists’ mostly nude representations of women.

Legacies were cemented: Woman as Viewer became the first feminist art show put up at a major cultural institution in Canada. Boob Tree was selected as the exhibition’s catalogue cover image, as well as for the promotional poster — which, of course, was frequently stolen off telephone poles and bulletin boards.

Now, Boob Tree is one of the most-loaned pieces in WAG-Qaumajuq’s permanent collection.

“At the time when we had to select it, Lauren had just had her son — he’s in the little bassinet there,” says Lischka, 61, pointing to four-month-old Francis, who is snoozing away. The women are gathered around the dining room table in Lischka’s art-filled home on Thursday evening, buckets of flowers from Petals West crowding the kitchen.

“So, you know, being a mother, becoming a grandmother, it was a very feminine type of symbol.”

It also seemed like a more straightforward piece to interpret. Lischka is a dentist, not a professional florist, though she definitely has floral-arrangement skills.

“I thought at the time, well, how hard can that be? It’s only, like, three colours — light pink, fuchsia pink and brown. How hard? But then you try to figure out, OK, what flowers will go?” Lischka says.

Peonies, regrettably, aren’t in season, so they made the pivot to hydrangeas, which are also an appropriately globulous shape.

“But it’s a bit of a risk, because hydrangeas can be a little finicky in terms of how long they last.”

So goes the creative challenge of making art with live flowers.

Lischka became a member of the Associates of the WAG, which supports the gallery through fundraising, volunteering and community outreach, after attending Art in Bloom about eight years ago.

Along with Lauren, 32, and Maddie, 30, she made their first creation — an interpretation of an Inuit doll — for the 2022 edition of the event and created another work for 2024. That one was an ambitious cloud-like structure that required an assist from Lauren’s husband, who is an engineer.

The thing about Art in Bloom displays is they must be stable.

For Boob Tree, a tall, heavy vase covered with the sleeve of a brown sweater will supply the trunk.

“Thrift shops are very helpful for these projects,” Lischka says.

Lauren selects eight hydrangeas that will form the basis of the tree’s crown. It’s time to start working with the flowers. This is the most nerve-racking part, because you have to commit to your choices.

“Because they’re living things and they’re delicate, you have to be careful because you can snap a branch or you can damage a petal. You can only change it so many times,” Maddie says.

The flowers are stuck into water-saturated foam brick material called Oasis, which is placed in a shallow pedestal bowl that will top the vase. A grid is created from floral tape.

“It’s like the brassiere,” Lauren jokes.

Once the hydrangeas are placed, the women move on to other flowers — mums, roses, snapdragons and carnations in various shades of pink, red and lavender among them. Eucalyptus provides a little greenery.

The process moves quickly, but meticulously. Lischka places a spray rose bunch. Pauses. Examines her work.

“Too much,” she says, and removes the offending stem.

“It’s live art,” Lauren says.

“Sometimes the flowers dictate it,” Lischka adds.

Lauren is partial to using gumball pink hypericum berries to fill spaces, especially since they look very much like tiny boobs.

“I feel like these are a microcosm of what we’re going for,” she says with a laugh.

Once all the larger flowers are placed, it’s time for the most challenging part of this work: adding “areolas” to the hydrangeas. Hot-pink carnations have been selected for this honour, but they are posing issues: the stems are too floppy. They’ll need to be reinforced with floral wire.

Constructing the arrangement isn’t the only tricky part of this process.

“It’s challenging to think of how to interpret the artwork in a way that’s true to the original artist’s intention, often without a lot of context about the artist’s work and their thought process,” Lauren says.

But that’s also the wonderful thing about interpreting art: it’s an interpretation.

“(Boob Tree) evokes bounty, whimsy and unapologetic femininity, the medium itself rooted in traditionally female craft,” their Interpreters Statement reads in part. “Our interpretation extends this language through other feminine emblems of abundance — soft-petalled roses and textured hydrangeas foremost among them — joined by companion blooms that echo themes of health, fecundity and joyful excess.”

There is a hydrangea hanging near the bottom of the arrangement that has been affectionately nicknamed Saggy Boob, and which will obviously be front and centre. She is the last to get her areola.

Now, the piece is finished, ready to be (carefully) transported to the gallery in the morning. A total of 48 stems make up their version of Boob Tree.

“Aww, look at Saggy Boob,” Lischka says, pleased. “Saggy Boob’s my favourite.”

Flowers from the installations will be repurposed for delivery to health-care centres, hospitals and personal care homes through Floral Philanthropy in partnership with CancerCare Manitoba Foundation.

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