Flora Bella XXX

Deming's "Flora Bella" series came about when the man in charge of building the new Chrysler building in Detroit contacted Deming. He was a huge fan of David's work (especially the tripods) and he wanted something to put in front of the Chrysler building. He needed it to be more vertical than the heavy, low-laying tripods, but he wanted it to maintain Deming's shapes and geometry. So Deming created a model of the first "Flora Bella." It was more planar than the voluminous tripods, but the "bloom" at the top was still signature Deming. The original was supposed to be a hulking 70 feet tall, but unfortunately due to budget cuts, the Detroit project was scrapped. Not all was lost however! Deming's newly discovered form lived on in the Flora Bella series. Translating from Italian to "Beautiful Flower," Flora Bella earned this name because "it was pretty," and Deming had just returned from Italy when he decided on the name.

Deming considers Flora Bella to more figural in form than the series preceding it. The verticality gestures towards an abstraction of the human figure, while the bloom gestures towards naturally occurring forms in plants. This particular piece outside of the United Cerebral Palsy Building is the thirtieth in the series, and has been chemically painted with cupric nitrate to give it its greenish color.