Sarasota's Sandy Payson creates a joyous flower garden in her home — out of paper

Sandy Payson just wanted to create beauty.

Six years ago, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Four months ago, she was moved into hospice care in her Sarasota home, where she lives with her partner Robb.

But during that time, throughout the taxing chemotherapy and other medical procedures, and despite facing an ultimately terminal illness, Sandy did something extraordinary.

Filling an 18-by-20 foot room in their home is Sandy's garden, which features a multitude of flowers and wildlife, brought together in a singular work of art. Some plants are perched up against the walls, others dangle from the ceiling and even more are situated on a table in the center of the room. There are also rocks, mushrooms, butterflies and fish amongst the flowers.

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It is an atmosphere filled with wonder, all created out of paper.

Sandy hopes that when she dies, her family will use the flowers for her celebration of life.

Keeping occupied, creating joy

At the start of her battle with cancer, Sandy needed a way to keep herself occupied. Her background as a ceramic artist – she was once commissioned to create a mosaic for the Fruitville Library – made artwork a natural solution.

She made the switch to paper instead of clay because “craft was always vital to me. I played with clay, I love clay. But with cancer, clay is hot and heavy and dirty.”

The garden is made up of paper flowers cut out of "Shakespeare's Flowers" and about 40 other books, and fashioned into three-dimensional shapes by Sandy. Robb ordered many of the books from used bookstores around the country.

The result is orchids, wildflowers, roses and other plants, in all shapes, sizes and colors. It took Sandy a lot of time and effort to create the flowers and organize the room, but it was time and effort well spent.

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Sandy’s pride and joy in what she has made is obvious.

“Sometimes I’m in here and a feeling washes over me, like I’m a little girl playing with my toys, in my own little world, in this really happy place. And that’s amazing, I mean I haven’t had that feeling since I was a little girl,” she said.

Flowers were a natural choice, considering their brightness, beauty and as a symbol of the passage of time. Besides, Sandy said, as her voice trailed off, that “it’s hard to go wrong with flowers.”

“In the foreword of this person’s book,” Sandy said, referring to one of the books she used for her flowers. “She talks about how flowers accompany us through our whole lives, when you get born, marry, die. And they just follow the whole arc of our lives, and they say things too, emotional things.

“They grow everywhere. Even in ice and hot desert sand, somebody will pop up. It’ll show you that there's some life in there.”

The fact that she referred to flowers as a “somebody” shows her connection to and love for her flowers.

Great support, and spreading her joy

Sandy, who went to high school in Philadelphia, moved to the area for her freshman year at New College of Florida in 1975. In hindsight, she said with a laugh that “it was the right amount of miles from my family.”

Reminiscing on that time, she called Sarasota “a quiet place.” A self-described “tree hugger," Sandy expressed disappointment at the lack of priority on the environment over the years, but still kept saying how much she enjoys living in Sarasota.

“After I graduated, I just stayed here because I love it so much,” Sandy said.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, her and Robb's lives changed, but they made the best of the situation. They spent what Sandy calls the “uptimes” traveling to Europe and South America.

The pair was “having as much fun as absolutely possible,” according to Sandy.

When Sandy is working, Robb treats her “like I’m Picasso” and gives her the help and support she needs to keep doing what she loves.

“He’s been everything. He’s done everything for me since I got sick, and through all this,” Sandy said. “I’m like ‘Paloma [Picasso, the artist’s daughter], bring me another beer.’”

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“Stay out of her way,” Robb said, with a laugh, when asked how he has supported Sandy. “Just do the tasks that needed to be done.”

Her support system extends to the rest of the family, too. Sandy has two older brothers, one who lives in Sarasota and one who lives in Philadelphia. The one from Philadelphia visited with her nephew recently and saw her garden for the very first time.

“He came and he saw it, and he was really, really overwhelmed and he couldn’t believe nobody had seen it,” she said on that special moment. “So he made it his mission to get some people to see it.

“I could see how proud he was of me and what I had made, and that was like, such a reward.”

That resulted in a recent Saturday party, where her brothers invited friends over to see the garden. Seeing others marvel at her work was a memory that, while recent, will endure into the future.

'Creating things is a great way to relieve despair'

Currently, Sandy’s goal is to add a water feature to the garden, and to expand what is currently a small swamp in the left corner of the room. More broadly, though, Sandy’s hope is for the garden to become part of a local museum or botanical garden.

That might be a tough undertaking, but then again, so was creating an entire flower garden from a few books.

When it came to what she wants people think about when they see her garden, Sandy got right to the point.

“Beauty exists everywhere, even in the darkest corners of our lives in the world. But if you look you find something beautiful, and creating things is a great way to relieve despair,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota woman makes joyous paper flower garden