Photo by Molly O'Keeffe.
Maurice Harris is a Los Angeles-based artist and founder of the floral design studio Bloom & Plume, and of a coffee shop with the same name. Before joining the panel for the Zócalo/Kinsey Collection event, “Can a Football Stadium Be a Black History Museum?,” he sat down in the green room at SoFi Stadium to tell us his thoughts on RuPaul, jacarandas, and some inspiring artworks.
Spring is here. What is something you want to see blooming?
My bank account.
It also means it’s jacaranda season in Los Angeles. Yay or nay on the purple flames?
Yay on the flames. But they secrete a little liquid and they bring it on you a little bit—that’s the part I don’t love.
Where do you find inspiration?
Everywhere around me, really. I’m fortunate to have 20/20 vision, so I just keep my eyes open. If I was going to be more specific: I’m really inspired by my staff. I’m powered by Black women at the moment. And they are such a great source of affirmation and accountability. It’s really been helping me to be responsible. And being my best self by having confidence and believing in what I’m doing. Because they do.
What are you listening to these days?
I’m a very strange person. I live in silence for the most part. I don’t listen to a lot of music. Unless I’m really deep in an album. If it doesn’t match my mood—I’m such a moody person as a double Cancer—it’s very distracting. And because I’m so musical, it’ll take me out. So it’s hard to focus with music. I kind of like it quiet.
What’s one place you like to go in Los Angeles?
I go to the Echo Park Lake almost every day to walk my dog, or MacArthur Park. I just moved to MacArthur Park, out of the apartment that I’ve lived in for 21 years. I had to downsize and do things differently. As I’m creating a new home for myself and re-curating a new space, that is also becoming a favorite place of mine; where normally I like to be out and about doing things.
What is one piece of art that sticks with you?
The very first piece of real artwork that I ever collected was by Kenturah Davis. She does these meditation drawings where she writes the same phrase over and over again until it creates a portrait. Mine is “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing. I am deliberate and afraid of nothing …” And it’s this beautiful photograph of this young girl that she saw on a trip when she went to Africa at some point in her life. I bought that in like 2015, and it still is just as powerful. Another artist that really does it for me is Titus Kaphar. He has such a way of bridging heavy subject matter with excellent skill. The combination of the two is just so poetic and romantic and beautiful and thought-provoking.
What’s your go to coffee?
Oat milk cortado.
Who is your dream dinner guest—dead or alive?
Probably RuPaul.
What would you serve RuPaul?
His signature: a Tic Tac.