Virginia Poundstone at Locust Projects.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. And this particularly commercialized holiday is intricately associated with flowers. Every ad tells you to buy the blooms for someone, anyone, to prove your love — it’s a great gig for the flower industry.

That industry is something that New York artist Virginia Poundstone has been intrigued by for years. Flowers, of course, can also be solemn, decorating funerals and grave sites, ever ready as well for religious ceremonies and dinner table settings. Poundstone comes to Locust Projects (a Knight Arts grantee) to install her latest flower-related installation and exploration, “BOG — MIA” starting on Saturday. Miami has a special relationship with flora, as our Colombian neighbor is one of the biggest exporters of flowers in the world, and much of it is shipped and distributed through Miami. In fact some of the sculptures on display are made from painted shipping boxes found in warehouses near the airport.

As beautiful as these natural creations are, there is something mechanical and even cold when flowers are mass-produced, turned into a massive international trade; they seem to lose their smell and delicacy. Poundstone delves into this dichotomy in her sculpture and video. For a solo show in the fall, the New York Times commented that her exploration “makes it difficult to separate nature and artifice, art and craft, and maybe even the quick and the dead.” Her stop in Miami is part of an international tour, which will take her flower power to the Netherlands (another flower-producing powerhouse), Japan and Kenya.

In the project room local Alan Gutierrez unveils “Nobody Knows Me Better Than You,” which while centered on paintings, will have accoutrements that change during the duration of the exhibition.

“BOG  — MIA” and “Nobody Knows Me Better Than You” open on Sat., Feb. 8 at Locust Projects, 3852 N. Miami Ave., Miami; www.locustprojects.org.