Today we’d like to introduce you to Brooke Reid.
Hi Brooke, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I found floral design through sort of a long and meandering path–I started my career as a display artist for Anthropologie and then came to flowers by way of prop styling and often having to pick out flowers at the flower market to use on set, for clients. I knew nothing about flowers, but I was intrigued by them and wanted to learn more. When I moved back to my hometown of ATL in 2015, I started working at event companies to learn floral design: everything from the names of different varieties to processing, mechanics, and transporting them for setups. I would make arrangements and photograph them with leftover flowers and local flowers I’d purchase on my days off, usually from my favorite GA farm, 3 Porch Farm.
I worked primarily as a freelance event floral designer until early 2020 when the entire event industry shut down overnight due to Covid. I found myself with a lot of free time on my hands, and I began creating arrangements with weekly boxes I’d order from 3 Porch Farm and flowers from friends in my community. Those arrangements, and the process of creating them, became a lifeline for me when it didn’t feel safe to leave our homes. My boyfriend Kyler Dennis, a camera operator and cinematographer in the film industry, brought his knowledge of lighting to the scenes I’d create, using tape, parchment paper and fabric to control the sunlight streaming through our window, giving the photos a painterly quality. I shared the images on Instagram and began receiving requests for prints of the images, which is how I got to where I am today, selling prints and cards online and slowly growing into selling my work in stores, which is a part of my business I’m hoping to grow this year!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been an unexpected road–I have been an artist all my life but never identified as a photographer, so this medium and way of creating work is new to me and has been a steep learning curve in many ways. As an artist, I am very hands-on; I like to create tangible things, but with this work, creating the image is a small part of the whole process.
Learning how to get the scene I created on my kitchen table to an edited file that is calibrated for printing and shipped to a customer is something I never anticipated dealing with! I didn’t know anything about Photoshop when I began this journey and now it’s something I use almost everyday–that said, it’s rewarding to see that I’ve learned a ton in the past couple of years and as hard as it’s been at times, there hasn’t been a boring moment in the past couple of years, and for that I’m grateful.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an artist interested in creating environments. In the past, those environments have taken the form of installations, but like so many during Covid, I pivoted to create with what I had and what I could access from my home safely. The immersive floral photographs I’ve been making over the past almost two years now grew out of that. While flowers are my current medium of choice, I draw on my experience in prop styling, installation work and printmaking for anything I do. I believe that all of those experiences inform my work and will continue to do so as I grow and evolve as an artist.
I’m most proud of how I’ve been able to pivot and adapt and continue to create work in the midst of challenging circumstances.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@brookereid.com
- Website: brookereid.com
- Instagram: @brooke_from_scratch
Image Credits:
Brooke Reid
