‘Wallflowers’ @ The Frye

Flowers, but make them restless. At the Frye Art Museum’s “Wallflowers,” the humble floral still life gets a quiet but thorough shake-up. The show pairs 11 paintings from the museum’s collection — think poppies, roses and lush tabletop arrangements — with 11 newly commissioned wallpaper designs by contemporary artists, turning a traditionally contained genre into something more immersive and alive.

Even the older works refuse to sit still. In Richard Schmid’s “Still Life with Spider Plant” (1966), loose, flickering brushstrokes scatter light across the canvas, giving the composition a sense of motion that feels anything but fixed. That energy carries into the surrounding walls, where the exhibition blooms outward into pattern and repetition.

Some of those patterns push into stranger territory. In Greg Ito’s wallpaper design, “Bloom Beyond the Boundary,” plum blossoms (drawn from his family crest) repeat alongside flickers of flame, suggesting a garden that seems to burn and regenerate at the same time. Nearby, Seattle-based artist Azadeh Gholizadeh builds a quieter, more meditative space: a grid of geometric blossoms and potted plants that feels part tapestry, part digital construct, rooted in ancient motifs but unmistakably contemporary.

Moving through the show feels a bit like wandering a cultivated garden, shifting between moments of close-looking and full-body immersion. What emerges is a reminder that flowers — far from decorative afterthoughts — have long been a place for artists to experiment, encode meaning and rethink what a still life can do.