No flowers? No problem. Artist Mark Sfirri makes bouquets out of wood in Philly

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Widely recognized as a master of wood-turning, Mark Sfirri of Bucks County is enjoying his first solo museum exhibition. “La Famiglia” opened last month at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia’s Center City.

That show begat a second, simultaneous exhibition, “The Flower Show,” at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pa.

“It’s unusual that I would have two solo museum shows in a year since I’ve never had a solo museum show before,” he said.

“We’ve been calling it, The Year of Mark,” said Jennifer-Navva Milliken, executive director of the Museum for Art in Wood.

Sfirri has had connections with both institutions going back many years. Both have in their collections versions of his iconic “Rejects from the Bat Factory,” a rack of lathe-turned baseball bats that are warped and twisted into seemingly impossible shapes.

Sets of “Rejects” have also been acquired by the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and the Smithsonian Institution.

“Mark’s work always has this sense of whimsy and humor,” said Michener Museum curator Laura Igoe. “You see the bats and you’re at first like, ‘Oh, it’s bats.’ Then you’re like, ‘These bats look strange, not really functional as bats.’”

Several years ago Milliken approached Sfirri to create new work for an exhibition that showed off his signature style of multi-axis woodturning, or carving wood spun in multiple directions on a lathe.

“He had just retired from being head of the woodworking program at Bucks County Community College. He was ready and energized to give his full attention to his own studio work,” she said. “I thought, why not take advantage of this and see what he can do in terms of making a statement about his work.”

Sfirri’s exhibition is somewhat autobiographical. He had recently lost his parents to age and dementia while also welcoming his first grandchild. He was also thinking about how both sets of his grandparents had immigrated to America through Ellis Island in New York.

He tends to anthropomorphize his pieces. Even pieces that are not figurative are given personalities and backstories, as though they are characters in a play that exists in Sfirri’s head and hands.

The exhibition “La Famiglia” does not represent Sfirri’s family but a broader concept of sets of crafted objects that share characteristics that make them appear related.

His piece “Ellis Islanders” is a set of dozens of small figurines made from turned white holly, that have cartoonishly exaggerated facial features.

“My four grandparents came through Ellis Island in the early 1900s, like a lot of people my age if they were coming from Europe, and I saw it as an interesting group to look at from an artistic standpoint,” Sfirri said. “One of the things that I noticed was that everybody was wearing a hat. So they all have hats. And then the noses. The prominent features in those are the hat and the nose.”

Milliken said one of Sfirri’s artistic signatures is taking a weighty topic – in this case immigration – and doing something funny with it.

“He’s often drawing from color palettes that come from comic books or other pop culture sources,” she said. “This is a part of the sense of sensitivity and empathy of Mark. He’s always using his personality to draw in audiences in a friendly way, and coax a smile out of them.”

Sfirri’s second show at the Michener Museum, The Flower Show, was birthed out of necessity.

While he was preparing “La Famiglia” at the Museum for Art in Wood, his son Sam Sfirri was preparing to get married. He and his fiancé Kim decided to hold their 2022 ceremony at the Museum for Art in Wood. They learned it came with a restriction: no flowers allowed.

Like many collecting museums that hold artwork made from sensitive materials, the Museum for Art in Wood does not allow organic material in the space as an abundance of caution against pollen and pests that may infect the collection.

“I thought: No problem. I’ll make them,” Sfirri said.

Using his wood turning lathe he made a pair of bouquets in their own floor vases in accordance with Kim’s favorite colors: reds, purples and pinks. He then made a bridal bouquet carved from holly, a wood that is so naturally white with grain so small, the wood flowers appear porcelain.

Then came a groom’s boutonniere. And then lapel flowers for the groomsmen.

Sfirri kept on turning after the wedding. He made dozens of flower arrangements, all of which now fill a gallery of the Michener Museum like a florist’s shop.

But nothing in that shop is recognizable as an actual flower.

“No, categorically not,” he said. “When I first started, I asked my daughter-in-law Kim what’s her favorite flower. She said Ranunculus. I’d never heard of that. So I looked up what they look like, and they’re beautiful flowers. I started making one and it was awful. It was just so bad. It looked like a float ball to a toilet.”

Sfirri decided to make flowers that only exist in his imagination.

“What I realized is that if you just put a stem on them and put them in the vase, there are flowers,” he said.

Because of the family connection, Sfirri originally wanted the flowers to be at the Museum for Art in Wood as part of “La Famiglia.” But by then the exhibition was already locked down and fully prepared. So he called the Michener Museum.

Flowers are still coming out of Sfirri’s woodshop near New Hope.

“I don’t foresee that changing,” he said. “But someday I’ll get bored of doing that and I’ll see which way the wind’s blowing, and go in a different direction.”