In this episode, we speak with Loney Abrams and Johnny Stanish, the artists behind the conceptual floral brand Wretched Flowers, about their longstanding artistic partnership, the complicated social history of foraging in America, and the aesthetic potential of invasive plant life.

Podcast produced by Ryan Leahey
Original theme music by Kasper Bjørke
Photographs by Clement Pascal

Landon Metz:
Where are you guys? Are you in Connecticut? 

Loney Abrams:
Yeah. We're about a seventy-minute drive from Brooklyn North, so we're right on the border of New York and Connecticut, near Danbury. Right now, we're doing some construction on the main part of our house, so we're in weird areas: Johnny's in the basement, and I'm in bed with a puppy and a cat.

LM:
Sounds great! 

LA:
Yeah, they can join the conversation. Sure! 

LM:
How did you guys end up in Connecticut? What's the story there?

Johnny Stanish:
It's kind of a crazy story. Basically, we were in Brooklyn for the past ten or eleven years, and we were finally like, “You know what? We can get a house for a cheaper mortgage somewhere.” We were looking at upstate New York; a couple of our bids went through, but one of the places like mold in it, so we kind of backed out. Then we realized that over the border in Connecticut, property tax is cheaper, and so we just kind of went that route. We needed to be within an hour or a little more over from the city, and we closed right when the pandemic hit the city. We were kind of part of the exodus, but we were already leaving; it just so happened to be at the same time.

LM:
So you’ve actually been there for like two years.

LA:
Yeah. Basically, we lucked out. Connecticut was the only state, apparently, to not fully recover from the 2008 crisis, so there was cheap real estate—I mean, relatively speaking, obviously. This house we found had just been sitting here for like a year, and we got it right before all hell broke loose. So, we're super grateful and lucky and fortunate to have gotten this place, because like Johnny said, we had been kind of hoping to get out of New York for a little while. We were just waiting for the right time, but you know how it is. I mean, once you have your studio rent plus your apartment rent, it's just it's an expensive place to live.

LM:
Totally.

LA:
So yeah, greener pastures, for sure. I'm sure we'll get into it, but with our work, too, it just kind of made sense to have land. Like, we have two acres now. So we wanted some land, we wanted some space, some place to kind of spread out. It was random where we ended up; like, I think Johnny's first time in Connecticut was looking at the house.

LM:
Cool. [laughs] 

LA:
He had never been to Connecticut before. I had driven through it, but we knew nothing about the area. We still don't really know a whole lot. But yeah, kind of random, but it worked out.

LM:
How has the move impacted your practice?

LA:
A lot. Well, a lot of changes happened when we moved. So, like Johnny said, it was March 2020, so the whole world changed right when we moved. But also, we basically were working multiple full-time jobs to make this dream happen right up until we moved. So not only did we move house, we also left pretty toxic, awful full-time jobs that we hated and then just became full-time artists, and we also teach at Pratt, so it was a lot of transitions at once. But now we have, like I said, just more space. We have a full ceramic studio in our garage, we have a second studio with 3D printers and a screen printing lab. We basically have two or three studios in our house, and then, like I said, plenty of land and space to go forage and things like that, and then just, like, time. We’re not working for the weekend to work more on the weekend—we're just kind of taking it easy a little bit, which feels really luxurious, but I think that's the way it probably should be.

Christopher Schreck:
Yeah.

LM:
How has that time and space affected your work? Like, I'm sure that you have a new energy, no?

JS:
Definitely. At first, it was really just about finally building out our dream studio—which, everyone knows, you keep adapting your studio, but I think it helped us be able to experiment a lot more. Our studio in Brooklyn was 300 square feet; now we have 600-plus square feet, plus another studio, plus all this land. So it’s allowed us to not be confined, or be dictated by the space we’re working in, and we've been able to experiment more with growing plants and things like that, which we weren't really able to do in Brooklyn as much.

LM:
Has the relationship to foraging shifted or evolved since you've moved? Obviously, the local flora is something very different.

LA:
Yeah. The reason this all started was so NYC-specific. It really started with us having a studio—where was it? Like, East New York?

JS:
Yeah, it was in East New York. We had a shed that we used in our backyard, too.

LA:
Yeah. Around that area, there was a lot of parking lots and warehouses and sidewalks that were just kind of neglected and not really kept up, and so a lot of weeds were growing around our studio. We’d be waiting for resin to dry, walking around and being like, “Wait, what? This just grows here? No one planted this?” We were totally amazed by the biodiversity that we were finding in the so-called “concrete jungle” and just being like, literally, how did this get here? How did this one plant migrate from wherever in the globe it had been to this spot? We kind of just started asking questions and looking things up, and that's kind of how Wretched Flowers basically started. That was such a big part of it, and really kind of celebrating the natural world that does allow itself to grow in New York. That kind of resilience is inspiring, and it's cool, and it's fun to look at, and it's interesting to research. So by coming out here, of course, we have so much more access to plants and foraging, and it's in some ways a lot easier, but in other ways, there was something kind of magical about doing it in New York. Here, it just kind of feels like you're being the rural person you're supposed to be, whereas in New York, you’d feel like you were like doing something bad: even though picking flowers is the most wholesome thing you can do, it is against the law, and so we almost felt like maybe how like a street artist would feel, or somebody who's still making art and doing whatever but kind of having to creep around, like “Do stuff at night, watch your back.”

JS:
Yeah. At one of the parks, we got in trouble. We’d always use the excuse, like, “Oh, it's a school art project. It's for school,” and they’d basically turn a blind eye. So there were a few times where we got approached and they were like, “You know, you shouldn't be doing this,” and that kind of led to more research about foraging laws and things like that. So yeah, I think like Loney said, there was more of a kind of guerilla attitude, where around here a lot of places we forage are either on our property or, like, there's this hunting place called Cranberry Mountain in New York, and there'll be people hunting birds, and then we'll be foraging, and the hunters are always like, “Oh, you guys are cleaning up the weeds for us to be able to see birds better!” So it's just a way different attitude here.

LM:
Are there different foraging laws in Connecticut versus New York, or just in a rural environment versus an urban environment? 

LA:
There's not, but there’s also, like, no cops here. It's just a different thing. I mean, I don't think people are getting arrested for foraging anywhere, probably—well, that's not true. I think it's like anything else: it’s kind of up to law enforcement discretion on who they target and what they will crack down on, etc. But unsurprisingly, it has a very racist history tied to the end of slavery and trying to—I mean, should I get into it? You didn't ask this question. [laughs]

CS:
Yeah, we were definitely going to ask you about this.

LA:
Okay, cool. Basically, once slavery ended and slaves were freed, a lot of people left the farms that they were working on and would forage or hunt and then sell what they could find in order to make a living. And basically, slave owners were like, “Wait, now I don't have anyone to work on my farms!” Like “no one no one wants to work”—we're familiar with this phrase now. But basically, laws were passed that made foraging illegal and made it very hard for freed slaves to make a living, and many were forced back onto the farms that they had been enslaved on, now as indentured servants or “workers,” but not really. So it's kind of been just left over from this law that was essentially just a way to encroach on the rights of like freed slaves, and it continues.

CS:
Yeah. I mean, it seems to have served a dual function, where it is marginalizing certain communities, but it also is reinforcing certain notions of private property.

LA:
Exactly.

CS:
You know, you guys are really generous in the way that you share your research online, and the three-part series that you did about anti-forging laws was really eye-opening for me. But the flip side of that is the third portion, where you spoke to why, in light of this history, foraging might also remain not just a beneficial practice, but even a subversive one. I wonder if you think along those lines in what you're doing now?

LA:
Well, there's a couple parts to it, and the first part has to do with: what’s the alternative, at least with food? Everyone has to eat, so either you're supporting this Big Ag system that may be problematic, or you're foraging, never using pesticides or herbicides, it's local, all those things. But then there's also the other side of it, which is like, how does the actual environment react? So there's a lot of different ways you can go about forging. For us, since we're not foraging for sustenance, it's not like we have to get certain things, so what we focus on is things that would actually improve the little micro-ecosystem that we're in if they were removed. We look at invasive species that need to be or could be pulled out, species that are harmful to the other species that are there, or if we're cutting native species, we're looking for things that have already reproduced, so there are seed pods and things like that. We love flowers, we love forestry, we want to engage in this art form, but we also are just not comfortable sourcing flowers that are grown in Colombia with tons of toxins and pesticides and flown on jets to Miami, and then need to be packed in refrigerated trucks and shipped all over the country. I mean, it has a huge carbon footprint—like the food we eat and everything else. So for us, foraging was the solution, or an alternative to engaging in a system that we weren't really comfortable with.

JS:
Right. Really, what happened is we were exploring around the Chelsea flower market, and it kind of just made us think, like, “Oh wait, where is all this coming from?” We weren't florists by trade—we literally just stumbled into it exploring around the city. That was what led us to start researching about the flower industry and all those types of problems Loney was talking about. So really, it was exploring around the Chelsea flower market and really just being like, “Wait what is going on? Where is all this coming from? Daily refrigerated?” That's part of our subversion, where we're like, “Oh, maybe we should just start foraging as well, and like pay homage to the things around the city that like are neglected and overlooked.”

CS:
Right. Earlier, you mentioned invasive species; I feel like even the name Wretched Flowers seems designed to challenge, and maybe even invert, certain conventional notions of imperfect and desirability. I'm wondering if that might be a good way for us to get into what Wretched Flowers is, for people who maybe aren't familiar with the project, and how these ideas of deformity, decay, and ecosystems all fit into the concept of the project.

LA:
So, Wretched Flowers is basically the name that the two of us use to describe an ongoing project that has a lot of different things. It includes foraging and research into ethnobotany and making content for Instagram and digital media that's about that research and about looking at what the relationship is between plants and people and society and culture. But out of that, we also we create a lot of things. We have an e-commerce website, where we sell a lot of dried arrangements; we make ceramics, we make homeware-type stuff, in addition to one-off artworks that is more for the gallery world, and then we also do events. We do art direction for events or happenings or dinners or that kind of thing. So, yeah, we have we have a lot of different ways of expressing our interests, but at the heart of it is this idea: in the conversation of art and art history, when we talk about beauty, this is something that we associate with Romanticism. This is an old conversation, right? If we’re talking about art and it's beautiful, we can still use the term “beautiful” and we know what that means, but it's kind of an outdated conversation at this point in art history. With floristry, not so much. We're still just obsessed with beauty and freshness, and a beautiful flower means a flower that has been unbruised, untouched, very youthful, at the height of its reproductive moment. There's not too much wiggle room when it comes to beauty in floristry. So what we’re hoping to do is to really look at the whole life cycle of each plant, not just that one single moment of distilled beauty, and really look at it like, “Okay, maybe beyond just beauty, maybe something to celebrate and recognize is the end of a plant's life cycle, when it's a seed pod, and maybe it's gray and maybe it's decrepit and maybe it has holes all over it where beetles have been munching on it, but that's what makes it cool. It fed those beetles, and that's awesome.” Just kind of trying to find other ways of presenting forestry and bouquets beyond just your typical beautiful flower arrangement.

CS:
So you established Wretched Flowers in 2019, is that right?

JS:
Yeah, in the summer of 2019.

CS:
But you guys had been collaborating artistically for a number of years prior to that—and I gather that you two are married as well, which I didn't realize until this call. So how did you first meet, then? Was it at Pratt? I know you teach there, but you guys also went there, right?

JS:
Yeah, we met at Pratt. We were doing our MFA from 2011 to 2013. We were just kind of in the same studio together, always around, hanging out. We were best friends for, like, two years—like, really, really close—and then right before we're about to graduate, we started this project called Hotel Art, kind of collaborating as curators with that, and then it kind of struck me one day. I was like, “Oh no, I'm in love with my best friend [laughs] and I was, like, a little worried—

LM:
Wait. Okay, what? Please tell me what that moment was. [laughs]

JS:
Honestly, it's so cheesy. It’s been so long, I can't really remember, but I just remember sitting there, and it just clicked. I was like, “Oh my God. Loney is the exact person I've been always looking for, without having to look! She's always been there, we get along really well, she's super smart, I love her work.” It just checked all the boxes. You know, when you're really close to someone, you can't really tell what flirting is and what just casually having a relationship is, so I didn't really know what here vibes were. I saw her and her friend kind of snickering one day—we were at this bar Lone Wolf—and then I really got the vibe. I was like, “Oh, maybe she's feeling this too.” And then here's what happened: she got bed bugs.

LA:
Oh my God, I’m, like, blushing so hard right now.

JS:
She got bed bugs and called me. I answer, it’s like three in the morning or whatever, and she's like, “I have bed bugs. Can I come stay the night?” I was like, “Of course,” and that kind of struck off the romantic situation. So bed bugs brought us together, I think.

LM:
Oh my God, a blessing in disguise.

LA:
Yeah, right? Little did you know that that was my pickup line. I didn’t really have bed bugs. I did that all the time! Just kidding, that would have been messed up. [laughs]

LM:
Loney, how about you? Was that the night it really clicked for you, or did you have something brewing before?

LA:
No, I definitely had a crush. I don't really know a specific moment, but I think just through Hotel Art, like we would go on these really fun adventures. We would be like, “Let's find some weird spooky hotel upstate that we can do a show at,” or “Let's go to the beach and do some weird photo shoot.” Johnny was always up for doing these weird little adventures with me, and it ended up being these cute little romantic weekend getaways with my collaborator. Eventually, it just became obvious that we were doing this partially because of Hotel Art, because we were excited about it, and partially just because we enjoyed spending time with each other and wanted to go hang out in a hotel room, basically. I don't know why I get so uncomfortable; I'm blushing so hard. It's just so cute. It's so cute to hear him talk about it at the very beginning like that. But yeah, we were always collaborators before we were dating or anything like that, so our entire relationship has been really intertwined with our collaborative artistic journey, for lack of a better word.

CS:
What makes the collaboration work? Is it about shared sensibilities, where you're thinking in similar terms? Or is it more that one person's vision and skills complement the others’?

JS:
With Hotel Art, we were curating, so it was a little bit easier. That was kind of like a taste gauge, right? But when we start actually making work together, it took us several years to figure out our visual language and what we were talking about. We failed a lot, and kind of made a lot of bad art for a few years. I think that taught us how to work together, who has strengths and what realm that we're working in. So it just took us a little bit to understand each other's working process, who's better at what, and then we were doing a project that we were calling There There, which was more of a contemporary art kind of practice. We were having fun doing it, and we're having shows and stuff, but we weren't even able to buy our own work if it was at the gallery. We were just like, “This is sort of unfair. No one's able to even enjoy this stuff unless you have X amount of money.” And so that kind of made us also switch into a different kind of format that was more accessible for more people to be able to participate in. You’d only have to have 50 bucks to buy a little Wretched vase or something, instead of $4,000-plus to buy a wall work.

LA:
Like he said, we definitely start very 50/50 with any idea, just like bouncing ideas back and forth. And then there is a division of labor that ends up happening as a project continues, just based on like what we each like to do and are good at. I mean, it's almost hard to imagine at this point doing things separately, because most of what we talk about and think about and do is the work, so it's hard for me to imagine not constantly hearing about somebody else's thought process and work and not wanting to participate in that or collaborate somehow.

CS:
You mentioned Hotel Art, where (for listeners who aren't familiar) you were installing guerilla exhibitions in hotel rooms and then presenting the documentation after the fact at other venues. So there was a conversation about what's the work? What's the venue? But I was also really interested in this joint show that you two did in 2016 at the Knockdown Center, which to me, in retrospect, seemed to introduce a number of ideas that you're currently exploring with Wretched. I think on a literal level, I could maybe point to the bird seed sculptures that were built from molds, where you're actively inviting birds to help transform pieces, encouraging interspecies cooperation—but more broadly, there was also this clear intentionality with your choice of materials, where you're selecting your ingredients in order to highlight (and I would say, question) the economics and systemic practices behind them. That seems to be very true with Wretched as well. So I guess I'm wondering, when you established Wretched, did you see it as an extension of ongoing themes in your work? Or did you see it more as a separate venture that was informed to some degree by your training and perspective as artists?

JS:
It's interesting you note that specific show in 2016 at the Knockdown Center, because that was really when we finally kind of figured out our visual language together, at that show specifically. I mean, I'll let Loney go into more of it, but I appreciate that you've noticed that, because we did, too. I think it kind of came into its own. We had our own practices going on, and I had never really taken collaboration serious. It's funny, because we co-teach at Pratt—we've been co-teaching there for five-plus years—and it's really hard to teach collaboration. We always try to tell the students, it's kind of a learned endeavor. You can't really force collaboration on someone. I think that's why our collaboration works out so well, is because it just kind of naturally happened. It wasn’t a forced thing; we just realized, “Oh, we both have similar interests. Oh, we both have certain skills in certain areas. Let's try to have two lives lead one.” Of course, there's always some push and shove, but that's okay with any sort of collaboration.

LA:
Yeah. I think that when we first started Wretched, we saw it as a complete departure and a separate thing. We weren't necessarily making any sort of decision, like, “Okay, we're stopping this and starting this.” It was just kind of like, “Let's see where this goes.” But I think the more we go, the more clear it is how connected it all is. It's the same ideas and same concepts that we're always interested in, but with Wretched Flowers, I think we're more interested in looking at not just the content, not just the subject matter, but the model that we're working within and looking at. Like, how can we think about, rather than art objects that really only work in the context of a gallery system and collectorship and all that mess, how can we make editions? How can we think about merch being something that we make and are proud of, not having “merch” be a dirty word? So in some ways, Wretched is more of just a different model, and that's what makes it really different—but subject matter-wise, what it really boils down to is the form of something versus its material makeup, and how the material makeup of something is inherently political and interconnected with everything, basically. So looking at one example that we always talk about: You might see two loaves of bread that look exactly the same. They’re the same shape, they're the same color, they're in the same type of bag. But if you look at the ingredients, you can tell this one has flour, water, yeast, whatever, and that signifies a very specific kind of production method versus one that has fifty ingredients that you can't pronounce, and that is indicative of a completely different global supply network. In the same way, if you're looking at a carnation or whatever two flowers, they might look identical, but one was grown in our backyard and one was shipped from Columbia. So we're kind of drawing attention to that, trying to look beyond just what things look like, but what they're made out of and what that says about this capitalistic world that we live in. With Wretched, we talk about production a lot, we talk about companies and brands and policies and all these things a lot, but what if we actually just tried to model what we think a company should be? What would that look like in our eyes, to actually say, “We're not just artists, we're also business people and brand people and whatever that is,” and try to figure out what that might look like? Looking back, it was a very natural progression, but I think at the time, we were too close to it. We didn't really see it that way.

LM:
It's interesting hearing you both speak about this, because I feel there is this sort of tendency to have a macro lens as far as the positioning of the output—but also, in a very beautiful and poetic way, it reminds me of the description of a flower that you were speaking about, Loney, where it's not just this one particular moment in the life cycle of the flower. It's kind of zooming out and taking the time to look at the subtleties of how this particular moment is situated within the overall life cycle of the plant and of the flower, and how that fits into the ecosystem. There's a very thoughtful approach to looking at an ecological notion of honestly, frankly. It seems like everything. I think you both have a tendency to have a very zoomed-out and interconnected approach, whether that's through the way you're looking at the way plants are situated in their environment or the way art and artists are situated within their careers or within their context or communities.

LA:
That’s so interesting. That’s a really interesting observation. It’s cool that you think that. I like that. I mean, maybe that's partially I think why we're drawn to ecology. I mean, in undergrad, I didn't study art—I studied ecology and sociology. It's basically just looking at systems, and that kind of science really allows you to think in the macro or the zoomed-out, which can be really helpful when looking at relationships and how the world works. But that's interesting, because I hadn't really made that connection so literally. I think with the subject matter—Johnny grew up on a ranch in very rural Montana, but I grew up in a city, so my entryway into the world of ecology and nature was an academic one, mostly. Johnny's was much more an experiential childhood one, and I think that kind of continues into this collaboration, where Johnny's a lot more hands on and experiential in the way that he works and contributes to the project and I’m much more petty or academic. Not that we both don't also just enjoy the outdoors; especially now that we have this pup, we’re going on hikes every day and where we live is beautiful. We can do that easily. But yeah, I think that we both had an interest in the subject, but from very different viewpoints, and they've kind of carried through. Have you guys ever worked collaboratively at all? I mean, you’re collaborating right now with this podcast…

LM:
Chris and I? Yeah, I mean, we have a pretty long relationship of collaborating, I would say.

CS:
Yeah. Collaboration can take a lot of different forms. I think that the discussions he and I have in Landon’s studio, I would consider collaborative to a certain degree.

LM:
Definitely.

CS:
The way that he and I have approached the essays that I've written about his work have been collaborative to some degree, too. It's about exchange, and it's about ideas being realized through different venues. That's how I think about it.

LA:
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

CS:
I will say, something that I appreciate about the way that you two have put across your ideas—and, as I mentioned earlier, being very generous with your research—is that even in being critical of certain systems, and even in reinforcing notions of consumer responsibility and personal choice, it's not about being prescriptive or laying out a guilt trip. It seems like it’s much more about speaking to simple awareness and then offering different options in terms of behaving intentionally. I wonder, first of all, if you’d agree with that, and how conscious a decision or effort that is on your part, but I'd also be curious to know how your work with Wretched has maybe had a similar effect for you, and how it's expanded your perspective.

LA:
I really don’t want to be prescriptive at all when it comes to consumer choice. Sometimes it's just really hard not to: like, when we see a hundred thousand roses being delivered to the Kardashians and people talking about how beautiful it is, it’s hard not to want to get blamey. This is something we were exploring in that 2016 show, too—just the frustration with the burden that consumers have to act ethically and responsibly. It is the responsibility of corporations and the government to make sure that we are safe and protected and that nobody is being exploited, and nature isn't being extracted to the point where it's no longer sustainable. That is not any consumer’s responsibility. Any type of advocacy that I hope to get across is much less pointed towards the consumer or our customer and more so pointed towards the people who actually have power, which is not our customers, really. We try to be clear about that, but I also think that a lot of the response that we've gotten from people is like, “Whoa, I never thought about flowers this way. I never thought about my bodega flowers being covered in pesticides when I stuck my entire face into them and took a big whiff.” So I think it's great that people are able to take away from that, and if they end up making choices based on this new knowledge, that's awesome. But again, it's hard, because in the end, often our arrangements are definitely more expensive than your bodega flowers or your Trader Joe’s flowers, and I don't expect anyone to choose ours over any others purely based on principle. So yeah, we try to be really gentle about that. I don't know that we're always successful in that; we might come across sometimes as a little preachy, almost. But it is more about, like you said, criticizing the systems that are in place that make it really, really hard for consumers to make good choices.

LM:
I have one kind of non-sequitur question for you: Do either of you find you need time solo to recharge? Do you have autonomous respective practices that you like to keep private for yourselves?

JS:
It's funny you say that, because only recently has that been a talk among Loney and I. Sometimes you do kind of need to have your own thing. Like, my own thing—I hate to even say this—but I make music, but no one hears it. Only me and Loney hear it, maybe a few friends, but it's very much for me. It's very therapy-based, and I'm terrible at it, but I've been doing it. I love it. And then Loney has her own little stuff.

LA:
Yeah. I've been making music for my whole life, too, and no one's ever heard it, and I it will always be that way. It’s really nice to have a creative outlet that not only isn’t collaborative but isn't for anybody else. I think we both kind of hit a wall at some point. I think there are different points in any artist’s career when they really grapple with it. Once they really have an audience and they have demand and they have a style, it can feel limiting sometimes, right? Not even limiting—sometimes your brain just gets rewired in this way where you're like, “I don't know whether I'm thinking through my own eyes or this internalized perspective of everybody else.”

LM:
You become a machine, in a way.

LA:
Yeah, you do, and it's really hard. I really started practicing, when I would finish something, just really looking at it and not judging, but reflecting on my thoughts and whether they were coming like my real own sense of satisfaction or disappointment, or more like, “Will this do well? Will people like this? What kind of content is this going to make? How are we going to shoot this for the website?” That kind of thing. It does affect how you work, even if you're super aware of it, or even if you try to resist it. So I think it's important to have—for me, at least—a creative outlet that I've set this rule for myself, where no one's ever going to hear it, so I never have to have that kind of thought process. I never have to think, “Is this likeable? What will people think of this?” It's purely just fun, so I do it.

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