The show itself came about the way the best ideas tend to: sideways. Thirty green glass vessels from Rafi Ajl’s Saguaro series were sitting in her studio, waiting to be installed in a Caymus-Suisun project, when the afternoon light came dappling through the trees and set them off against the green of the garden outside. That moment, along with a new daughter, a partner in architect John Umbanhowar who she knew would say yes, and a garden she’d been wanting to share, tipped her into hosting. Rather than a gallery or showroom, she opened her own backyard, the quarter-acre plot behind her Sonoma home that she, John, and their daughter treat as an extended living room. The house was wrapped in burlap. The garden, with its coneflowers, sunflowers, hellebores, herbs, redwoods, and plum and peach trees, was left to do what it does. Thirteen artists and designers from the Bay Area and LA, every one of them a past, present, or hoped-for collaborator, were invited to respond, and over 60 new works came back.

And the works are all imaginative and grounded at once. Amelia Tru Czaczyk’s first bench, a soft, amorphous form wrapped in 7,000 tiny green mosaic tiles with robin’s egg blue end caps, sits like a mossy stone that decided to be furniture. Joe Ferriso’s Light Eye, a hollow eye-shaped tunnel of reclaimed redwood painted prismatic green inside, catches and throws the garden’s color differently every hour of the day. Claudia Lamberty and Sam Conkling debuted their studio with four picnic-style tables made from old-growth redwood salvaged from wine fermentation tanks, the staves still stained from years of use. Kate Greenberg’s Grove Bench in Monterey cypress curls around the trunk of a tree. Taylor Donsker excavated an abstract composition into a slab of Claro walnut burl. Hanneke Lourens brought her Barred Side Table, whose stainless steel bars trace back to the security grids on buildings in her native South Africa. Amanda Swain’s bio-resin Garden Vessel settled in so naturally it looked related to the trees. Add Rafi’s thirty greens, Jess Feury’s hand-dyed textiles hanging against the burlap, Stephen Kenn’s quilts pieced from WWII military canvas, Creativeware’s walnut mirror, HB-AS’s iron oxide vessels, Ron Mann’s corten steel, and Gigi Allen’s painted screens and Plot rugs, and you have a show where nothing feels placed for effect. Everything feels like it belongs to the yard.

Having come across and admired so many of the artists involved over the years, we understood immediately why this one felt different. It would be unfair, even unjust, to compare Verdant Phenomena to an exhibition in the usual sense. It reads far more like a love letter from Sarah and her family, a look through her eyes at the beautiful world of the people she’s found and the one she keeps building and nurturing through relationships and work. Sarah describes her role as providing a stage and then letting the rest happen, and you can feel how little curatorial ego is in the room. There’s no prompt to decode, no white box to fight. Just a garden, a group of people who trust each other, and a few weekends in late summer. She’s already talking about doing it every other year, and we hope she does.

Read our conversation with Sarah below.

Rather than a showroom or gallery, you opened your own back garden, the space you and John call your extended living room. Where did the idea come from, and what made this the right moment in your life and practice to host something like this?

The idea for Verdant Phenomena came from a combination of things: the way I practice, having my daughter in early 2025, my co-host ready partner [John Umbanhowar], the garden itself, and a moment of awe when I saw Rafi Ajl’s Saguaro series, which was commissioned for a hospitality client of The Bureau’s in 30 shades of green.

The way I practice within my projects is inspired and driven by collaboration with artists and contemporary designers. 90% of what is realized in my projects is custom furniture, lighting and art or an extensive art program, especially when working for a large commercial client. This creation of community through collaboration and connection to people and places, has undeniably made a huge impact on each project in our portfolio and the outcomes for our clients, and for the people our clients host or serve in any capacity.

Having a daughter in the last two years has provided new electricity in many ways. She is woven generously into Verdant Phenomena’s story. I feel this viscerally rather than focusing on it literally. She has also spent the beginning part of her life in the very space we enhanced with this show.

My partner John Umbanhowar, also known as “Architect John,” is a generous host and an ever-curious human. The fundamental reality that I knew he would welcome this and support it in so many ways provided another green light.

The garden itself is wild yet manicured just enough and so full of interesting and ever-changing flowers, trees, produce (thanks to John), herbs, and new sculptural natural elements to catch our attention on a lunch break in the sun… I felt the pull to share it with others. The show also helped to create more places to take a pause and especially lay down within it. We spend too much of our day posturing in front of a screen.

Then Rafi’s pieces, 30 vessels imbued with a spectrum of shades of green glass, come to life in light. I had these delivered to our studio while they were waiting to go to The Bureau’s latest, a project for Caymus-Suisun that we designed, opening this month. In our studio, I had them placed in the light streaming through the open doors facing the exterior garden. The light fell and dappled through the trees and hit the 30 shades inside, and it all meshed beautifully with the spectrum of green outside. Light was connecting it all and it all felt infinite. This tipped me into wanting to do a show outside. It was the final pin, pulled.

The thirteen artists and designers are all people connected to your work in some way, past, present, and aspiring collaborators. What does it mean to you to build the show around those relationships, and what did you see happen when you brought them all into one place?

It’s very important to me to honor collaborations. They are relationships, and with proper care from all sides, they benefit everyone. That’s the magic. I am honored to quietly act as a conduit for creating that.

It feels like I am providing a stage, a thoughtful, safe place for talented special people. Then letting the rest happen.

You’ve said the green of Rafi’s glass sculptures sitting on your porch became a muse for the whole show. How did the garden itself shape the works that came out of this, and what surprised you in how the artists responded to the setting?

Similar to The Bureau’s project process, we provide parameters and directional bumpers if needed along the way. We hope to gently guide them, while allowing the artist and their practice to move and take the form natural to it. All the while, knowing the space (this one especially well) is what I do in every collaborative process. Each meeting or share from the artist of a progress sketch is a moment of surprise for me. It is a very rewarding aspect of this work.

In this one in particular, some examples of surprise:

Gigi Allen. She continues to evolve, her visual language is constantly in motion. Just like her newest foray into animations, her practice is alive and delightful to interact with. Our rug and scarf collaborations were an intuitive and simply fun process. Our sensibilities weave together smoothly. Not much needs to be said between us really. This is also magic.

Amelia Tru Czaczyk: a new collaborator who created electricity herself. She put forth many sketches of ideas and wanted to do her first bench. The selection that came to life with its 7,000 tiny mosaic glass tiles (with the end cap clutch of the robin’s egg blue tiles) summarizes the garden and the human interaction perfectly. Her two planters that I placed at the entry of the show also provided a great duo for introduction. To me, they feel reminiscent of found artifacts, past plans, and remaining structures all done in a slightly dance-like yet form-aware composition. Another curious juxtaposition that frames us with nature.

Joe Ferriso’s Light Eye piece asks viewers to allow it to frame your perspective and view from many angles, to take pause. This is exactly what I wanted to happen here. The way it interacts with light with the prismatic paint inside. The sculpture gives way to a visual explosion of greens and reverberates it in a precisely ethereal way. As a lot of his work does (see his paintings). The joinery and beauty of the redwood material gives the viewer even more to assess, an even longer pause is asked.

There are plenty more… I found that every collaborative process and result provided surprise. Claudia Lamberty and Sam Conkling came with old growth redwood decommissioned wine stave dry fit tables with brass feet. They exceeded the dining table and made it so much more. The craft level is simply stunning.

Amanda Swain of Chimera Design’s Garden Vessel, made from bio resin, felt like a relative to one of our trees here once it was in place. I personally own another piece of Amanda’s in the same material and it is lit up nightly in our residence. The material has layers and connotations yet the forms are simply organic. Taylor Donsker’s pieces are all inspiring prompts like others, to create pause. They do it with a confident and provocative presence, especially by using a material and organism we should do nothing but honor. One of his works felt very sacred in a way, so I placed it within the garden like an altar; nothing on top of it.

Verdant Phenomena reconsiders how exhibitions can happen simply. Now that you’ve lived it, what has hosting this way taught you, and does it change what you want The Bureau to do next?

I would love to repeat this effort bi-annually. Whether it is here or elsewhere. I have produced exhibitions for companies I have worked with in the past, and this was my first with my own studio, The Bureau. I had this in my five year plan, but I chose to bump it up. Applying this model to events elsewhere is also something I am interested in. The generation of community and its connection to place at this scale and duration is an invigorating exercise to me. The Bureau’s projects aim to do this as well, yet they take longer and last longer. No matter where the exhibition is held, the “why there?” will tell us how to start and clarify purpose/meaning.

Holding Verdant Phenomena adjoined to our living space and studio was also an interesting choice to us, in that we were familiar with it prior to the new ‘characters’ arriving. I will be curious to see how long the memory of the pieces, once they leave, will last in the locations they were placed. They have become a temporary part of our home in tandem.

Placing the show in a wild, colorful setting versus a white box gallery format was exactly what this show requested. It could be an interesting feat in the future to test it within a monochromatic setting.

A learned lesson, when it comes to mapping the show, it is best not to put out a map of the layout until a few days before the show. For a majority of the pieces, the pre-planned placement worked perfectly, but there were other pieces that I wanted to reserve judgement for placement in person once they arrived. Knowing they needed to be felt out. Trying to issue a map for all prior to is a catch 22.

All in all, it is an honor to host a space for people to mutually benefit from and within it, feel a sense of reward. We have that ability in our practice, whether it’s through showcases, new connections, or appreciation and generosity, to offer and hold onto these values and opportunities. In the future we are workshopping smaller, more intimate dinners with shoppable, collectible pieces.


Photos by Danica Taylor, Cass Cleave