About the Artist

Andrea Oliva Florendo is a self-taught artist who found her artistic calling early rooted in the garden . She received her B.A. in Journalism & English degrees from St. Paul College and her B.S. in Education from Assumption Convent in the Philippines. While raising three boys, she obtained her Diploma in Decorative Arts from the New York School of Interior Design in the mid 80's. In 1988, she joined the Alliance of Queens Artists and for many years served in different capacities as a juror, committee chairperson, and president. In 1996, she became its Executive Art Director. It was while she was doing an Art and Crafts Fair that she was discovered by Carole Hollander, Regional Art Director of Bloomingdale's. She soon supplied Bloomingdale's with botanical paintings and joined their flower shows in Manhattan and Garden City.

While teaching Art from Kindergarten to Grade 8th in an Archdiocese of New York School, she forged a relationship with The Winthrop Collection, an interior design shop on Lexington and Madison Avenues, and a purveyor of antiques, neo-classical and Renaissance- inspired home decorative accessories and furnitures. As a free-lance artist from 1990-1996, she supplied the shop with one-of- kind painted furnitures, botanical frames, original paintings and participated in the company's World Expo on Decorative Arts at the Jacob Javits Center.

At about the same time, her creativity was led into a bigger arena--- Marian iconography. In collaboration with her husband, Romulo Florendo, a physician who hand-carved the architectural frames, the public would witness the creation of a series of paintings on wooden panels. The collection entitled, MARY: THE MASTERPIECE has been a traveling exhibit since 1992 making the exhibition rounds in France, Italy, Greece, London and the Philippines.

A church's commission led to her first public unveiling of an icon: Our Lady of Immigrants in a permanent shrine at a New York Church during the Columbus Quincentennial. A second icon Our Lady of the Roses was painted for a Catholic Museum and toured extensively to community centers, churches, schools and galleries. as part of the educational outreach program.. An icon of St. Marie Euphrasie unveiled during the Bicentennial celebration now hangs in a monastery in France. Her creativity and expertise in Art Education and grant-writing led to a full-time job as Director of Art Education of the National Museum of Catholic Art & History since 1997. A Research Fellowship Award from Yale University Divinity School in 2002 put a closure to another momentous task-a book project. This September 2004, Andrea came out with the publication of The Liturgy of Flowers In A Mary Garden, containing 160 pages and 75 colored images.