Piper Smith: The Way of Flowers

Piper Smith: The Way of Flowers by Epiphany KnedlerOctober 27, 2026

©Piper Smith, Reflection

I first met Piper Smith at Review Santa Fe last year. She showed me a number of works, from everyday objects in New York City to flower portraits, each one was slightly obscured. We had a wonderful conversation and I have kept up with her work since. I thought of her work, The Way of Flowers, the other day while I was teaching in Art History. We were discussing Plato’s Theory of Forms and using the idea of beauty, I asked students to give me an example of the imitation of beauty and most thought of flowers. I see this exploration in Smith’s series, exploring the variations of expression that flowers hold.

©Piper Smith, Day and Night

Piper Smith is a Hell’s Kitchen, NYC-based fine art photographer specializing in abstract compositions. Her artistic journey began with a BFA from the Goodman Theater School of Drama in Chicago, followed by a successful career as a stage actor and commercial spokesperson. Transitioning to represent and work with illustrators ignited her passion for photography, leading her to studies at ICP, SVA, and Parsons. She continues to refine her craft under Christopher Giglio’s THE GRAMMAR OF PHOTOGRAPHY, a program she likens to her graduate studies. Piper’s previous work has been showcased in numerous national and international exhibitions, including the 1650 Gallery, followed by Jadite Gallery, Hobart Gallery, The Pleiades Gallery, Viridian Artists, Praxis Gallery, PhotoPlace, Soho Photo Gallery, Hudson Guild, Grey Cube and the BW Athens Photography International Exhibition in 2023. She was also part of the 6th Development Program at BH Photo.

Follow Piper on Instagram: @pipersmithny

©Piper Smith, Wind Swept

The Way of Flowers

When I was a child, I never wanted a garden… I much preferred Art to Weeding, coloring with my 2 favorite crayons, the brick red and the forest green. I drew flowers on blank pieces of paper and “planted” them on my bedroom walls. I wanted to cover my walls with art – not necessarily pretty flowers but flowers that spoke to me – angry flowers, sad flowers, cheerful flowers.

The unexpected stillness of the Covid-19 pandemic echoed the self-contained world of my childhood artmaking. Turning my attention to the real flowers that arrived with grocery deliveries, I rediscovered the profound joy of experimenting with color, backgrounds, and composition. Printing these photographs and arranging them in my studio evoked the same sense I experienced as a child “planting” my walls with crayon drawings. The magic is seeing the flower in your mind’s eye, the excitement of the beginning. The science is standing back and thinking how to make it real, how to get the long stem to balance on the candlestick.

Working with my flower project is a return to childhood play and the pleasure of invention. “The Way of Flowers” explores my ongoing fascination with the expressive potential of a flower, a connection that traces back to my childhood crayon drawings.

©Piper Smith, Solitaire

Epiphany Knedler: How did your project come about?

Piper Smith: The Way of Flowers really came out of something I started doing during the pandemic. I’d walk to Central Park, find a tree set apart from the others, and walk around it a few times, shooting from different angles. Back in the studio I’d layer those angles together in Photoshop, keeping the different viewpoints faintly visible, and then play around with color. That’s how Ghost Tree came about.

©Piper Smith, Ghost Tree

After about thirty trees, a friend challenged me to change direction, so I set up a small studio in my NYC apartment and did the same thing with a flower instead—rotated it, shot it from different angles, and was pleasantly surprised by what I got. That one became Ethereal, and it turned into The Way of Flowers, a project that ended up taking me well over a year to shoot. Friends lent me all kinds of unusual vases and containers, and Whole Foods turned out to have a great variety of flowers.

©Piper Smith, Ethereal

EK: Is there a specific image that is your favorite or particularly meaningful to this series?

PS: Three is still my favorite, and it’s the one that’s gone on to win awards. It’s a tiny ceramic vase, barely an inch tall, with one slender stem in it. I shot it from a bunch of angles like I always do, then picked three of those frames and merged them into one image. There’s something about how minimal it is—just balance and line and quiet—that feels like the purest version of what I was going for with the whole series.

©Piper Smith, Three

EK: Can you tell us about your artistic practice?

PS: My practice comes down to experimentation and a real love for the print. I don’t think of a photograph as one single moment—I’m circling something, gathering angles, and building those layers back together, so what you end up with feels more like a sculpture of a subject than a snapshot of it.

Once I finished The Way of Flowers, I started walking through my neighborhood, Hell’s Kitchen, with my camera—shooting skyscrapers, parking signs, and a mannequin in a store window. I had a feeling of not being able to get out of there… it was a dark canyon with brightly lit buildings above—it felt like there was NO EXIT! That became No Exit.

Then a trip to Greenland pushed things further—I was shooting icebergs from a RIB boat, close enough to taste the ice. Not long after, I was in the high desert outside Santa Fe shooting lava mountains, hoodoos, and buttes. I started noticing how close those two landscapes were to each other, even though ice and lava seem like opposites, and that’s turned into my next project, Grounding Truth.

©Piper Smith, Ghosting

EK: What’s next for you?

PS: I’ve got a busy fall coming up! End of August I leave for Portugal for a few weeks to shoot open-air markets, the vibrant neighborhoods of Cais do Sodré and Bairro Alto in old Lisbon, and traditional Mercados de Ciganos.

Following that trip, I have two shows featuring work from No Exit: a feature exhibition opening October 8th at Soho Photo Gallery (539 W 23rd St, New York, NY), and a group show opening October 17th at FOMA in Santa Fe.

And I should mention—I was born and raised in the Midwest, Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota!

©Piper Smith, Her Lips

Epiphany Knedler is an interdisciplinary artist + educator exploring the ways we engage with history. She graduated from the University of South Dakota with a BFA in Studio Art and a BA in Political Science and completed her MFA in Studio Art at East Carolina University. She is based in Aberdeen, South Dakota, serving as an Assistant Professor of Art and Chair of the Art Department at Northern State University, a Content Editor with LENSCRATCH, and the co-founder and curator of the art collective Midwest Nice Art. Her work has been exhibited in the New York Times, the Guardian, Vermont Center for Photography, Lenscratch, Dek Unu Arts, and awarded through Lensculture, the Lucie Foundation, F-Stop Magazine, and Photolucida Critical Mass.

Follow Epiphany on Instagram: @epiphanysk

Tags: Flowers, garden, nature, Piper Smith, plants, The Way of Flowers