ith Veronica Ortuño
It makes total sense that flowers
serve as a sort of sacred vocabulary for Veronica Ortuño:
one of her earliest floral memories is watching stems being placed at the foot of La Virgen de Guadalupe statue, another is the scent of lilies at a funeral.
Both times, she was at church.
| And anyone can see the holy quality in the riot of petals that rained down on Veronica and her husband on their wedding day in Oaxaca, |  |
a Ceremonia Zapoteca Prehispánica performed to bless the future they’ll share together while honoring Veronica’s own ancestral past. |
This reverence for flowers runs in Veronica’s blood.
Her grandfather Papañiel religiously tended his small garden in Santa Ana, California, full of rose bushes, nopales, bougainvilleas, orange, lemon, lime, and guayaba trees, and his favorite, the alcatraz. To this day, her grandmother Hermalinda meticulously embroiders elaborate floral designs on linen, which Veronica now lovingly collects for her home. Veronica embodies this spirit of care with her personal ikebana practice, something she has been exploring informally since 2011.
Courtesy of Casa Veronica
“The main principle is the representation of heaven, human, and earth within a floral arrangement,” she explains. “There are strict rules and systems in ikebana, but I just try to encompass the main principle within the yin and yang of life — life and death, beauty and ugliness, perfection and error.”
Veronica’s talent for intentional
assemblage isn't just limited to florals.
Over the past decade, Veronica has built an international following as the founder of the groundbreaking boutique, art gallery, and community space known as Las Cruxes. While the sculptural merchandising of the shop alone could be considered an art form, what she managed to create within that space extended far beyond the shop's physical walls.
“With each arrangement,
I'm attempting to listen to
the language of the
flowers," she explains,
"and invoke their spirit".
Main photo by Benson Ellis.