Rising Stars: Meet Jess Mak of Campbell

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jess Mak.

Hi Jess, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve always lived between two worlds: music and flowers. By day, I teach music, helping kids find their voice through song and instruments. Flowers came into my life by accident. When I was nineteen, I was working a summer job at a Vancouver florist that served the city’s funerals. A Hong Kong film director came in to arrange flowers for her mother’s farewell. After the funeral, she told me my work had moved her. That single exchange changed the course of my life.

Years later in the Bay Area, I started Epoch Floral Atelier. What began at my kitchen table grew into a full business serving brides, celebrations and families. But the more I worked with flowers, the more I started seeing them as a way to tell stories.

The pandemic gave me the time to develop that idea seriously. By the end of that quiet period, I had turned floral arrangement into a real artistic medium.

This June, I’m having my first solo exhibition at The Spectacle Group in Hong Kong. The show is called *Still Blooms* and it opens on 2 June. The works use flowers as a language for memory and emotion. A lot of the inspiration comes from the manga and anime I grew up reading, where flowers always appear at the most important moments in a character’s life. I wanted to do the same with my own memories, the big moments and the smallest everyday ones.

What connects everything I do is the same thing. I want to create something beautiful that moves people.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s been both smooth and not so smooth. I’ve always loved doing events and weddings, and seeing my clients happy with the work makes it worthwhile. But there were moments when I felt creatively limited. In wedding work, the flowers serve the celebration. I wanted to make floral work that could express memory and emotion, the kind of work I’m now showing in *Still Blooms*.

Another challenge has been technical. Flowers are fragile and time-bound. Each composition can be placed only once. Too much handling and the petals wither. The full piece has to be photographed at the peak of its life, with no second chances. The turning point came when The Spectacle Group signed me and paired me with photographer Lee Yik Bong. He shapes each work as much as he captures it, and with him I finally had a collaborator who could hold these living installations still long enough to share them. That partnership has opened doors I hadn’t imagined.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a floral artist creating art installations with flowers and other plants. Using wired petals and other mixed media, I recreate special moments in my life. The wired petals don’t fall naturally but are held mid-motion and suspended. My work goes far beyond the aesthetics of floral arrangement. It’s about reviving my memories and emotions at the time, so that I can share them with my audiences.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I think luck is really about timing. Covid was a difficult time for everyone, but for me it became an unexpected turning point. With everything slowing down, I finally had time to focus seriously on my floral art. I built handmade grids, experimented with fishing line and surgical tape, and learned what flowers will and will not allow as an artistic material. I started a YouTube channel called *Will It Vase?* to document my experiments. A lot of what people see today, including the pieces in my upcoming exhibition *Still Blooms*, was built quietly during that period. The timing opened the door, and the work I put in behind the scenes is what shaped it into a real practice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thespectaclegroup.net/artists/jess-mak/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elmsbyepochfloralatelier