A single long-stem rose box arrived at my front door early last September, secured tightly by a blue ribbon. Inside was a delightfully whimsical plushie lily flower, a creative invitation to an art exhibition on Roosevelt Island for artist CJ Hendry’s interactive art installation, Flower Market. The artist built a 4800 sqft “greenhouse” and filled it with 100,000 plushie flowers presented in flower buckets for guests to pick and choose. The cost of the flowers was $5. Attendance exceeded expectations by the thousands and was forced to close down before it was moved to a location in Industry City where the visitor line-up was several blocks long. All this while the artist was 9 months pregnant with her 3rd child. 

CJ Hendry is a contemporary artist renowned for her hyperrealistic, large-scale drawings of luxury and everyday objects meticulously drawn with colored pencils. Hendry initially garnered worldwide attention on Instagram for her large-scale black-and-white drawings of luxury objects before branching out to work in full color with colored pencils on drawings that can take up to 200 hours. Hendry has expanded her practice to include interactive installations like Flower Market, sculpture, and other objects. 

Born in South Africa and raised in Australia, Hendry initially pursued architecture and finance before deciding to dedicate herself fully to art. Her unique approach and unconventional career trajectory have made her somewhat of a renegade in the art world due to her independent spirit and direct-to-consumer methods that bypass traditional galleries.