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We talk to Tricia Paoluccio

When it comes to pressed flowers, artist Tricia Paoluccio from Modern Pressed Flower is just the right person to go. Get to know her here in sisterMAG No. 62 in a short interview!

If you want to discover another interesting artist who works with pressed flowers, check out Reed Navarro here.

  • Photos: Danielle Wild

We talk to Tricia Paoluccio

We are delighted to be able to talk to artist Tricia Paoluccio, whose metier is pressed flowers. Besides elaborate dresses for Oscar de la Renta, she creates beautiful paintings or covers piano grand pianos with her pressed beauties.

Please tell us your name, where you are from and your profession!

My name is Tricia Paoluccio and I am a professional actor and an artist, living in NYC.

How did you get into flower pressing as an art form?

I grew up on an almond farm, in Modesto CA. My family always had beautiful flowers growing and when I was a teenager my mom bought me a little book on making pressed flower greeting cards. I was so inspired that my brother built me a flower press, which I still have to this day, and I started pressing the flowers I had around our farm. I began card making back in the 1990s and started selling them when I moved to NYC to pursue my goal of becoming an actress.

Where do you find your flowers to press? Do you purely collect them on the road or do you also buy flowers? Do you do your craft in NYC as well? What flowers can you find in the city?

I pick 99% of all my flowers on our own property – either in the foothills where my parents own a little cabin, or on the farm in Modesto. I also have extremely generous neighbors who are incredible gardeners. California is so abundant with such gorgeous flowers, practically year round, and I always pick and press flowers every time I come home. I always have about a dozen presses full at a time. In NYC I have to go to the flower market in Chelsea – which I sometimes do… but my favorite flowers to press are weeds and wildflowers and I prefer to pick them in nature.

What is your favourite flower to press?

The most beautiful wildflower I ever pressed was a Butterfly Mariposa Lily! Its like a little watercolored tulip looking lily that really does seem like a butterfly!

What is a dream of yours to work on as a flower pressing project? What would you like to accomplish in the next 5 years?

I am in the process of partnering with an incredible team to create a luxury lifestyle brand using my art across a whole host of mediums. There are so many applications for these designs and I’m very excited to announce our next steps very soon which include a new name, a new website, new social media handles and new collaborations with incredible partners. I hope that my Modern Pressed Flowers followers will follow along!

Tell us a bit about the project you did with Steinway? You covered a whole grand piano? How did you get in contact?

Steinway reached out to me to collaborate on creating a pressed flower inspired Grand Piano and I could never have envisioned it would come out the way it did. It was a true collaboration with a whole host of people and that piano has brought a lot of joy to people. Its still on display at the Steinway flagship store in NYC! I think there are some great plans for it! :)

How can you buy your work or get a real „Modern Pressed Flower“ piece?

Right now I have a few pieces left of my art prints that I sold at the gallery in NYC this past winter/spring. These are limited edition prints – I only made seven of each size. You can find these on my website: www. modernpressedflower.com under the Shop Art tab and we do ship internationally!

I also teach my classes on Zoom and have been so grateful to have shared my love of this craft of flower pressing to over 1400 people around the world since the pandemic. You can learn more about my classes under the workshop tab here.

The next course takes place June 26th!

If you want to discover another interesting artist who works with pressed flowers, check out Reed Navarro here.