Edward Blee was born and raised in Philadelphia. For decades, he worked as a stylist and later owner of Persona Salon in Boston, building a reputation as one of the city's leading stylists. During those same years, he designed and curated homes across Boston, Savannah, and now Palm Springs. He incorporated stumpery into these spaces from the beginning, sculptural arrangements of found and natural materials that lived in yards and rooms. Some were temporary. Some stayed.
What started as a recurring interest became something more focused. He collects obsessively now. He walks through the Coachella Valley and deserts. He picks through local dealers. Road trips across the country end with a car full of branches and driftwood and stone. The searching is part of it.
Onzai is the work itself. These pieces draw from stumpery and bonsai and flower arrangement, but they're not bound by any of those traditions. They exist in a state neither living nor dying. They need nothing from you. What he's after is proportion and formal relationship, the way different aesthetic languages sit together in miniature space. He's interested in scale and how it shifts what you're looking at.
