THE STORY
Krislyn Meyer-Komarov has been collecting things since childhood. Shells, rocks, sticks, flowers — gathered because they inspired stories that she could build around them. At night, after years of desk jobs, she would pull out her collections and make things. She would lose herself in the process. Objects that didn't arrive together found each other in her hands and she would think: what if it grew up like this?
When she eventually gave the making a life of its own — forming KRISLYN, a practice and retail offering that became known internationally for its sculptural, composition-driven approach to botanical work — the impulse at the center of it never changed. Sticks, stones, leaves, and shells. Imaginary worlds built from natural materials and found objects. The joy of making as its own complete thing.
The work evolved into larger environments, brand experiences, events through Organized Matter, the production and design studio she built alongside Mary Hill. The scale grew and the reach broadened. Through all of it she kept the boxes — the botanicals, the found objects, the accumulated material memory of two decades of making. The conviction that a well-composed object, given to the right person, is KEPT.
Kept Workshop is the return. The same boxes of botanicals and found objects, now deepened by everything the intervening years have built. A return, as Krislyn puts it, to a sacred space. An embarkation to wonderment and the freedom to express through material, story and kinship.
THE PRACTICE
For James and Krislyn, it begins with collecting. Not curating in the design-world sense — accumulating deliberately toward a known end — but gathering driven by instinct and feeling. A dried stem. A piece of bark. A mineral whose weight feels right in the hand. A seed pod whose geometry raises a question that can only be answered by holding it. Things go into boxes, into jars, onto shelves, into the workshop's accumulated material memory. They wait…in constant quiet conversation with everything around them, shifting in meaning as new things arrive and old contexts change.
The consideration at the heart of the practice is this: what was this, and what can it become? A botanical dried is not a lesser version of its living self. It is a different thing — new form, new weight, new surface, new story. James thinks about this in terms of architecture: the way natural form alludes to function, how a plant's structure is a record of everything it has survived and adapted to, how two entirely different species can solve the same problem with completely different geometry. Krislyn thinks about it as narrative: objects that didn't begin together finding each other, a composition that makes you think what if it grew up like this?
Both of them lose time when they are making. The world outside the work recedes. What remains is material, intuition, and the slow discovery of what a thing wants to become when it is placed beside another thing it has never met.
A Kept piece is in conversation with the person who receives it — something to be looked at closely, turned over, returned to. That encounter is what the work is made for. Kept Workshop is where that sensibility lives as a practice: a place to dig back into the boxes, honor what has been kept, and find out what stories are still waiting to be told.
THE ETHOS
We keep things. Objects that are well made, materials that have more to give, practices that have proven worth continuing.
The belief at the center of Kept Workshop is that design — floral, object, environmental — leaves something behind worth keeping. A piece conceived with its next life in mind. The dried botanical that outlasts the occasion. The vessel that holds flowers for an evening and holds meaning for years afterward. This is how we respond to a design culture that produces abundantly: by making things people want to keep because they are genuinely worth keeping.
The work is made to be experienced in person. Held. Placed. Lived with. Shared. It does not announce itself but rewards those who look closely — who run a hand across a dried stem or turn a found object to see what it reveals from another angle. We are interested in the physical encounter with beauty, in the conversation between an object and the person who chooses it. That is what we are designing for.
At Kept, we believe in curiosities and treasures, in the blend of materials and artifacts, in forms and worlds that carry spirit and their own quiet secrets.
Some things are worth keeping.
THE TEAM
Krislyn Komarov
Founder + Creative Director
Krislyn is a multidisciplinary artist and designer with over two decades of experience across botanical design, retail environments, and large-scale installations. She founded Krislyn Design, her namesake floral and retail studio, before building Organized Matter into one of Los Angeles's leading specialty design and production companies. Her work is guided by a focus on organic form, material honesty, and the spatial rhythm of composed environments. She is the founder and creative director of Kept Workshop and all divisions of Organized Matter, LLC – including Organized Matter, O.M. Studio, and RIG.
Mary Hill
Mary Hill has over 25 years of experience in design and event production — managing productions across the United States and internationally spanning runway shows, awards programs, large-scale private events, and corporate productions. She is known for building high-functioning collaborative teams and creating the operational structures that allow ambitious creative work to actually get made. Mary oversees production across all projects — managing teams, vendors, budgets, and timelines from pre-production through installation. She is a founder and producer of all divisions of Organized Matter, LLC — Organized Matter, O.M. Studio, Kept Workshop, and RIG — and the operational reason that ambitious creative work gets made the way it gets conceived.
Founder + Executive Producer
James Benn
James is an artist and sculptor whose practice explores natural form through sculpture, botanical environments, and lighting. A graduate of CCA San Francisco with highest distinction, his work examines texture, pattern, and the way materials interact with light and space — often within large-scale installations and immersive environments. He brings extensive experience in both fabrication and floral design, known for developing organic, unexpected structures that expand what botanical work can be. A lifelong collector of natural forms and found materials, James is a co-founder of O.M. Studio and a core creative collaborator at Kept Workshop, RIG, and Organized Matter.
Art Director + Lead Botanical Designer
Zaid Arriola
Creative Consultant
Zaid is an artist and designer whose work moves between set design, interiors, textiles and painted environments — a practice built around the belief that collaboration between diverse creative voices produces work that no single perspective could arrive at alone.. At Kept Workshop, Zaid brings a specialized focus on styling, art direction, decorative painting, backdrop creation, and specialty linen development — expanding the studio's material and aesthetic range as the practice continues to evolve.
SUSTAINABILITY
The practice of imagination plays a pivotal role in the transformation of materials, especially in envisioning how a fundamental design can take on myriad forms.
Kept Workshop is committed to circular design practice — making pieces that outlast the occasion, reducing single-use production, and keeping beautiful objects in active use. We work with dried and preserved botanicals, found objects, and salvaged materials with their next life already in mind. Sharing over consuming. Making over discarding. Keeping over replacing.
Sustainable floral design · circular event design · eco-conscious botanical décor · sustainable event styling Los Angeles · zero waste floral design · reusable event décor · sustainable object design · circular design practice Los Angeles
KEPT IS PART OF THE OM FAMILY
A design and production group located in Los Angeles, CA with a commitment to quality and distinction in aesthetics, details, collaboration, and mindfulness.
RIG
A collection of creative resources for the design and production community with a commitment to circular design practice.
RENTALS | ART DEPARTMENT SERVICES | FABRICATION | UPCYLING
FULL-SERVICE EVENT PRODUCTION | EVENT DESIGN | CREATIVE DIRECTION | SPACE DESIGN
A design and production studio specializing in built environments and live experiences across temporary and permanent spaces.
ORGANIZED MATTER
IG - @organizedmatterla
O.M. STUDIO
An atelier creating bespoke objects, artwork, and lighting elements for interior designers, retail shops, commercial installations and special projects.
ART & OBJECTS | LIGHTING | SCULPTURE
IG - @o.m.studiola
