UNCONVENTIONAL MATERIALS

   

This week I gave some of my students the Sogetsu curriculum exercise of making an arrangement using 'Fresh and Unconventional Material'. Unconventional in this context means anything other than fresh, dried or coloured botanical materials. It includes man-made synthetic materials, processed botanical materials or other inorganic materials.

The Sogetsu curriculum has a number of exercises in which the student is required to use man-made objects in ways for which they were not necessarily intended. These exercises lead the student into the discovery of unexpected qualities in the object or materials. Such creative experiments open the ikebana student's mind to also look differently and carefully at botanical materials. This means that, when they approach their ikebana, they are open to exploration and not simply using materials in ways they have done before. 

At the class Róża used partially shredded, packing cardboard, to create a saddle-shaped curtain beneath which we glimpse a cluster of small white roses in a ceramic vase.

I challenged Val by rejecting her original material and presenting her with some 'bubble wrap'. She then folded it into an open form and teamed it with a single orange coloured rose.

Helen cleverly arranged two pieces of green nylon gauze to look like a single length cascading from pandanus baskets. She has used purple statice to contrast with the green.

Kim used a sheet of black wire mesh to create this windblown form in a black ceramic vessel. He has added three gladiolus nanus at the front and two stems of them behind the mesh on the right side.

The previous week I demonstrated this exercise for the students in a modern Japanese ikebana vase. My unconventional material was rusty fencing wire that had a lovely curving form. I added a purple iris flower and two buds, courtesy of Helen.

Here is how it looked at home. 

For this exercise the unconventional material does not have to dominate, as it does in all the examples shown. However, it should not be merely a decoration but essential to the ikebana arrangement . This means that the work would look incomplete without the unconventional material.

Greetings from Christopher
21st October 2018