In a digital world where endless scrolling is commonplace, Acid Flwrs caught my attention immediately and made me pause. Striking, bold and innovative, the experimental art/floral project is dripping with colour and cool.
I got to speak to Claire Mueller, creator of AF who is a brand creative, start up consultant and still life stylist, currently based in Sydney Australia. Her background is pretty varied, having began her creative career in costuming for film and theatre, & moving to Melbourne to study fashion design. In 2012 however, her path took a turn when she moved back to Perth to do palliative care for her father.
“It gave me a very different perspective on the world” Claire shares, “I’d taken up running to deal with grief and became so fascinated by the transformative power of movement that I went on to study physiotherapy. It was a massive leap going from pure creative industry to a clinical science, but it made me realise that I’m an even split between left brain/right brain”
Claire now describes herself as ‘industry agnostic’ and states that she just likes to work on good things with good people. Acid Flwrs is the perfect example of this.
Acid Flwrs celebrates creativity, pushes boundaries, and the colourful bouquets are artworks in their own right. You can pre-order your own bunch of florals from your wildest dreams on the AF website.
Read in below for my interview with Claire Mueller…
AF is so innovative and cool. How did you come up with the brand and business?
AF was born from pure creative collaboration – a studio experiment between myself and my creative partner, RJ, who is a graffiti artist. We both have huge respect for each others’ work and were kicking about one Sunday wanting to make something fun. With our combined interests custom flowers just made sense. RJ knows everything there is to know about paint, and I’m a lifelong giver of flowers so they appear in my work a lot. We both love bold colours and pushing the limits on our skills so it was a very happy studio session. We were pretty blown away with what resulted and thought it must’ve been done before, but to the best of our knowledge it’s a completely fresh approach in floral design.
What are some of the challenges with working with a live medium?
More than I realised when we started haha. We purposefully chose Phalaenopsis orchids because of their longevity – they regularly last 2-3 weeks in good conditions – but by their nature flowers are perishable so one has to be careful with timing. We’ve learnt the best time to source from our supplier, when to paint and how to package them safely. The biggest challenge at the moment is interstate delivery – WA and TAS have very strict biosecurity laws so we can’t deliver there yet. The other fun thing no one tells you about working with flowers is that you have to get to the markets SUPER EARLY and it’s pretty hectic starting your day avoiding an army of forklifts hurtling around at speed.
Can you give us some insight into your creative process? How do you create these incredible floral artworks?
It’s a bit of science and a bit of creative magic! Interestingly RJ and I both have scientific AND creative backgrounds – he was in mortuary science for years – so we’re quite diligent with process. We did a lot of testing to get to the Acid.Flwrs you see today! The technique to create the patterning is inspired by a method traditionally used for textiles and paper printing, but we’ve evolved it to work on fresh flowers.
What would your dream project/collaboration be?
Ooh I have a few goal projects – they’re all in London. The Selfridges windows (one of the most innovative retail brands in the world who always have iconic visual merchandising), a floral arch at Maddox gallery (my favourite contemporary art gallery who do epic flower installations every season) and a Chelsea Flower Show installation for Annabel’s Mayfair. Beyond installations I’m dying to explore some ideas with a digital artist – the flwrs are pretty surreal so think they’d really work in a digital hypercoloured landscape.
Where can people order some Acid Flwrs?
At the moment we do limited edition drops, available in NSW/ACT/VIC/QLD/SA – get on the mailing list at www.acidflwrs.com or follow us on Insta @acid.flwrs to find out when they’re happening. We’re also open for custom orders for events or special deliveries outside of drops.
What’s next for Acid Flwrs?
Building a brand around Acid.Flwrs is really important to us – AF is the custom flwrs, but it’s also a creative studio practice that gives us a platform to explore art, design, installation and collaboration. We have big aspirations, from creating limited edition permanent art pieces to large scale installs to rolling out the flwrs globally. We’d love to share the magic and get AF available wholesale around the world, then keep evolving all the other ideas in the backlog!
Follow AF and the team at….
AF = acidflwrs.com / @acid.flwrs
CM = clairemueller.com / @clairemueller
RJ = anamelessforce.com / @anamelessforce