Oh dear, more wattle! This one is a little different. It is a semi-prostrate Acacia Baileyana, in our garden. Interestingly it is flowering a little later than the a. baileyana tree by the garden path.
This main part of the original plant is about 60 cms high.
In this close up you can see, at the top left side, how the branches have an arching growth. Similar to, but much smaller than, the growth pattern of a weeping mulberry.
Some branches of the plant have become completely prostrate, creeping under other plants and reappearing on the other side.
I suspect they will start arching again having reached full sun again.
In the last week of July the annual exhibition of Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter was held at the Sofitel in the city. I participated, making a structural ikebana using some of the Manchurian Pear pyrus ussuriensis prunnings that my students and I had been given.
This is what caught my eye when I saw them lying on the ground. I loved the multiple parallel lines and the small light grey highlight of the velvety leaf buds.
The stems also had a very interesting patterning that reminded me of other stone fruit trees, like cherry. With the chance of having such a lot of the material I immediately wanted to create an abstract style ikebana that would emphasise the linear form of the branches.
I decided to use a large ceramic vessel made by Graeme Wilkie of Qdos Gallery. It is a 'half pillow' form that he developed in 2007.
In 2008 I made this large sculptural ikebana using three of them in an exhibition at Qdos. After the exhibition I acquired the vessel on the left in this photo. To make the new sculptural ikebana for the I.I. annual exhibition, I arranged the majority of the branches horizontally supported on a single oblique branch. Doing so emphasises the parallel lines. If I had arranged them vertically, to most people, they would look like a row of trees.
The technique I used to secure the branches was to drill through them where two branches touched. I then inserted a bamboo skewer from the kitchen as a dowel which I glued into place.
Here is the finished work to which I have added a mass of Cushion Bush leucophyta brownii, which penetrates the plane made by the horizontal branches.
More images of the exhibition are at: Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter Annual Exhibition.
Greetings from Christopher
4th August 2018
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