MACON, Ga. — While spring showers are well behind us, two artists at the Mill Hill Community Center are making sure that May flowers are here to stay.
A year ago, ceramicist couple Jeni Hansen Gard and Forrest Sincoff Gard started the Macon Flowers Project. The collaborative art project asked Central Georgians to make their own ceramic flowers from Lizella clay.
“The idea was that we would do some kind of community project that would engage our local community,” says Hansen Gard. “And then we realized that we wanted to try to engage all of Macon.”
Central Georgians had chances every week to come in to Mill Hill Community Center to make their own flowers. In the past year, Sincoff Gard says that over 400 people have helped create ceramic flowers.
The ceramicists live in the Mill Hill neighborhood and are current resident artists at the community center. During their time there, the couple have watched the neighborhood improve and grow.
“Flowers are a symbol of new growth and that’s what’s happening in our community right now,” says Hansen Gard. “That’s sort of what’s happening in this community right now. The area next to the community center is going to be a park.”
Now that flower making sessions have ended, the Gards will use thousands of ceramic flowers to make one large sculpture. It will sit between the community center and the new park.
“Somebody asked me if I was sick of making flowers,” said Hansen Gard. “I was like, ‘No, actually!’ Making flowers is so wonderful, but I think more so, I’ve really enjoyed getting to meet people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
Hansen Gard hopes to have the sculpture finished by the end of July.