Before Keith Kralik met Rachel Parri in 2015, he’d tried many lines of work. “I’ve been an odd job holder my entire life,” he says. “I’ve always had the itch to do different things.” It seems as much of a surprise to him as anyone else that he’s now one half of Flower Press Studio, creating beautiful botanical art from pressed flowers. “It’s pretty random,” he admits. “The biggest achievement of my art career before this was drawing stick figures.”
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The Colorado couple, who came together over a love of hiking, bought a house together in Denver in 2019. When Covid struck in 2020, they both got furloughed, and used the time to transform their garden so Rachel could indulge in her passion for growing. “She’s the master gardener,” says Keith. “She’s always had a green thumb.”
The inspiration for pressing flowers came from social media. Keith made little gifts for Rachel from the flowers in their yard, and soon the idea took hold that they could make a business out of pressing, artistically arranging and mounting people’s wedding bouquets.
That urge to try new things is never far from the surface
They learned their craft at first from ‘striking’ weddings – going with the florist after the event has finished to help break down the floral set-ups, in return for which they could take the flowers home to practise with.
Their first season was manic. “We did about 200 bouquets, which is absolutely insane.” As a result, Keith and Rachel resolved to do only 40 in their second year, which was more manageable; but in their hearts, they realised it wasn’t the direction they wanted to go in.
The pair also became worried about handling so many flowers, all day, every day, without knowing if they had been sprayed with chemicals. So they pivoted from weddings to creating originals and prints to sell in their online shop, sourcing blooms from small flower farms.
A dream team, Keith and Rachel handle different parts of the process. Rachel does the majority of the pressing – “She is always tweaking things to try to figure out better ways to press certain flowers” – and the photography for their prints, while Keith is the one who lays out the art and manages the business.
From the start, they crafted home-made flower presses from chipboard and 8-inch bolts, because shop-bought models were too small. Through trial and error, they worked out how to press different flowers, sandwiched up in layers of paper and cardboard.
Deep ones like sunflowers are difficult because the base is so big, so you have to figure out how to push the centre down while keeping the petals flat.
Each press is completely redone with fresh paper every day for the first week or so – an onerous task but one that prevents browning or moulding – with the bolts tightened a little more each time. Then it is left to condition for six to eight weeks.
Once the flowers are ready, Keith uses his kit of tweezers, small scissors, paintbrushes and glue to arrange his specimens’ delicate petals and ungainly stems. Recently, he has broadened his palette. “Vegetables are super fun to work with, but they’re also really difficult because they hold so much moisture,” he explains. One solution has been to part dry in a dehydrator as well as pressing.
Once a piece is complete, which can take about three or four weeks, Rachel photographs it in the diffused natural light of her canvas-tent studio outside, before it is released as a new print.
Last year, Keith and Rachel left their Denver backyard and basement workroom and moved to a new home with a studio space in a rural town, closer to the mountains they love. They’ve dabbled in puzzles and wallpaper, and created their own online course on flower pressing, but Keith admits that urge to try new things is never far from the surface. “We’re still just itching, I guess.”
Useful information
Find out more at flowerpressstudio.com
