Made In Southeast Texas
by Julia Rodriguez
Pressed Posey, a local Beaumont business created by Deb Myers, started like many small businesses as an act of love for a family member. “I had been seeing pressed flowers online and wanted to try it. I made a pressed seahorse for my mother in law and pressed my sister’s wedding bouquet. Then I built a press.” Since 2019 Pressed Posey has created works of art from flowers for customers and created an Etsy where she sells prints, stickers, and tee-shirts. Her work is like a flower - pristine with every detail placed to compliment the whole but also whimsical in a way that isn’t silly; simple but not simply replicated. Pressed Posey is unique also in how sustainable and hyper local the business is.
Without spending too much time bemoaning the disastrous environmental and economic impact of the global floral industry, Myers’ practice of growing 85% of the flowers she uses herself is not only environmentally stabilizing to local pollinators in the neighborhood she lives in but also way cheaper and socially conscious than constantly buying “fresh flowers” from resource ravaged third world countries. The genius in growing the source of her art is not lost on her, but the planting came before the pressing in 2018 as an activity to do with her children.
While the business has been organically blooming in the last two years, Myers has higher hopes for the future of The Pressed Posey and what it means to be a artist in a society that trivializes creative achievements that women pursue, whether by educational background, profession, financial threshold, or content of the art: “Anytime one woman can thrive against that system is good for all of us.” You can follow her work and find her shop on instagram as @thepressedposey