Fresh flowers are showing up on random corners of Hell's Kitchen and Little Italy lately, and the man behind them wants passersby to stop, stare and leave the blooms exactly where they are. David Kisan, a third-generation florist and the founder of Sip N Bloom, has started quietly placing colorful pop-up bouquets in public spaces around New York City, repurposing flowers left over from his design sessions with clients.
Kisan calls the project floral graffiti, a term he used in describing the installations to WABC-TV New York. He gathers fresh stems from the Flower District on West 28th Street, then builds arrangements meant to catch people off guard in places they would not expect to find them. The displays have already popped up in Hell's Kitchen and Little Italy, according to the station's report.
Kisan is a third-generation florist, a lineage noted by stephaniehansen.substack.com, which also describes Sip N Bloom as a floral design event company that teaches people to make their own arrangements. The business got its start in 2019, when Kisan threw his first basic floral-arranging party on a North Loop rooftop in Minneapolis, as reported by northloop.org. That Minneapolis roots story noted Sip N Bloom booked somewhere between 150 and 200 events last year, even as Kisan expanded the company's New York operations and relocated to the city himself, with Kisan telling the outlet, “Nothing's changing about us operating here,” regarding the Minneapolis side of the business.
Pausing Strangers on the Sidewalk
Kisan said he likes arrangements that are colorful, interesting and fun, and he described the street installations as time-sensitive structures meant to encourage people to pause and be present, per the WABC-TV New York account. The idea is simple: temporary bursts of color dropped into ordinary sidewalk scenery, designed to get busy New Yorkers to slow down and notice their surroundings for a moment.
It appears to be working. One passerby praised an arrangement as beautiful and gorgeous, and people often stop to take photographs of the installations rather than walk past them, the station reported. Kisan said he initially expected people to pick flowers from the displays, but that generally has not happened — he told the outlet New Yorkers seem content to take in the beauty without taking the flowers themselves.
A Tradition of Flower Bombing City Streets
Kisan's project follows a lineage of florists turning leftover blooms into guerrilla street art. In New York, Lewis Miller Design became known for its so-called Flower Flashes, transforming random trash cans around the city into overflowing bouquets using a mixture of post-event flowers and fresh stock, installed on street corners or around statues, according to thisiscolossal.com.
A similar practice has played out far from New York. In Jacksonville, Florida, florist Laura Graham built temporary installations around town using leftover materials from weekend weddings, flower-bombing metal trash cans in front of Bold Bean Coffee and Sun-Ray Cinemas in the Five Points neighborhood, eu.jacksonville.com reported. Those displays typically lasted two to three days, and Graham said basic floral installations can start at around $500 before accounting for labor. Team Flower, an education resource for florists, has documented similar repurposing of event flowers as street art, with large-scale arrangements turning up in empty phone stalls, in front of blighted houses and attached to telephone poles, and it recommends florists use reusable chicken-wire molds so the wire can be retrieved for the next installation.
Looking Ahead
Kisan is now weighing where to place his next arrangement and says he eventually plans to partner with businesses and brands on the project, per the WABC-TV New York report. Temporary installations like his are designed to encourage passersby to appreciate their surroundings, turning an ordinary commute into a brief, unplanned encounter with something unexpectedly bright.
