To call Hitomi Gilliam a florist, or even a floral designer, would not be accurate. Rather, she is an artist who has chosen plant materials and flowers as her medium. In art terms, her work would be considered contemporary and abstract.

"It's not about arranging flowers; it's about creating organic art pieces," she recently told an audience of Garden Club of Honolulu members at the Doris Duke Theatre at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

"It's not just an arrangement," she added. "It's an experience." And she quoted architect Frank Gehry, who said: "The art is in the process itself."

Deftly applying principles of design such as repetition, balance, rhythm, harmony and unity, Gilliam worked with plant materials and flowers she had found at the Lyon Arboretum the day before.

Gilliam is adamant about using indigenous materials, but her choices of local flora were not what you would expect from someone residing in British Columbia. Rather than going for the predictable and exotically tropical, such as orchids, plumeria, monstera or ginger, she gathered huge dead guava branches, Ka'u oranges, lichen and enormous seedpods.

In addition, she brought to the demonstration lentils, kidney beans and mung beans to fill in spaces in huge vases to solidify her arrangements. She loves it when the foodstuffs start to sprout or even rot, because these are signs that the arrangement is a living organism.

Gilliam always has an idea or story behind her designs. She created one vertical masterpiece with a conical seedpod, twisted banyan roots and a "lava flow" of minimalist flowers curving around it.

Another creation — woven through a complex, twisted armature of guava branches — was her interpretation of the budding and new growth since the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Wilma.

As with most contemporary abstract art, not everyone in the audience was enthralled with Gilliam's work. While there were many "oohs" and "ahs" and bursts of applause, comments overheard also included "Now that's really weird" and "What on earth is she doing?"

Gilliam is used to that. It's part of being a maverick — and a modern artist.

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