Novi Librarian Creates Artwork from 1,000 Paper Flowers

One person’s trash is another person’s art — at least, it is for Novi resident Wendy Mutch.

She created an artwork comprising 1,000 flowers made from recycled paper from the Northville District Library. The flowers adorn a trellis over a bench; the piece is on display until Sunday in ArtPrize, an open art competition in Grand Rapids.

Mutch got the idea from seeing numerous worn-out books that were being thrown into recycling bins at the library, and she wondered how she could reuse the materials.

She decided to make them into flowers, and she crafted a bouquet of 25 of them for a library fundraiser in April 2010.

When Mutch was brainstorming for an art piece she could enter into ArtPrize this year, she decided that making 1,000 flowers would be pretty cool.

“Then I didn’t know how to present them, and I thought, 'bouquets all around—that’s sort of boring.' But if I could make it so people could be surrounded by them and sit, look and admire, that would be sort of nifty,” Mutch said.

She spent several months this summer cutting, gluing and arranging the flowers in her living room during her free time to get the piece ready for the start of ArtPrize on Sept. 21.

Most of the flowers are made from dictionary pages because Mutch says they are the easiest to work with. Some of the flowers are made from Michigan maps, and the colorful ones are made from National Geographic magazines.

Fifty of the roses pay tribute to Mutch’s parents, who celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this year. Those 50 are made from musical scores because her mother is an organist.

The piece is now on display at the City View Church in Grand Rapids.

To participate in ArtPrize, artists must upload photos of their work to the competition's website and hope a local venue chooses to host their entries.

The public can then vote on the pieces, and the top 10 (out of more than 1,000) bring home a cash prize; first place gets $250,000.

For Mutch, who is originally from Grand Rapids, winning was never the goal.

“I didn’t have any aspirations of winning because I know how it goes — it’s the public that votes, and they usually choose really big, dramatic things that win," she said.

"But I wanted to get accepted because I wanted to show it and have people see it and be inspired maybe to give things a second chance that you sort of throw away usually.”