Two weeks ago, on Sunday the 20th of October, Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter was invited back to the Ripponlea Estate to exhibit ikebana to support the one-day Botanica Festival. When I visited the mansion on that day, my attention was caught by the 'stained glass' windows lighting the main staircase.
They had beautifully painted botanical motifs...
...as can be seen in this detail of the lower section of the central window. I thought it was particularly lovely to see ikebana in the context of a (rather grand) domestic setting; which is quite different from a gallery or other public space.
The ikebana works had quite a different feel as they related to the various spaces. Photos of the ikebana works, taken by Helen Marriott, can be seen on this link.
Meanwhile, back in Torquay, we are having bouts of summery weather with much cooler, sometimes rainy, days in between. The rain, when it comes, is welcome as the plants in the garden are in their main growing phase.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a single very tall Bird of Paradise Strelitzia Reginae, which I thought I should cut before it was damaged by the coming rain. It was the first to open in the garden this season and, at the time, the only one. What to do with a single flower? Then I thought, it needs leaves and they can be the 'subject' of my ikebana. The flower will simply be a focal point or foil. Only then did I really notice the unused bunch of small monstera deliciosa leaves left over from the I.I. exhibition four weeks earlier. One of them had just started to yellow, creating interesting colour variation, less flat than the rich green on the other leaves.
This is my subject, four monstera leaves that I have 'squared off'. I remembered seeing this technique invented by Keith Stanley when, in 2011, he set himself the task of making a fresh ikebana arrangement every day for one year and posting them on his blog. Keith is a Sogetsu practitioner and floral designer in Washington DC.
My first Sogetsu teacher, Carlyne Patterson, would have called this changing the 'face' or 'appearance' of the material. This reveals one of the perspectives or attitudes of the Sogetsu School, in which botanical materials are treated as abstract three dimensional forms with certain textural and colour qualities that are used by the ikebana artist to achieve their design intentions.
Here is the profile view of the arrangement.
Here is the finished work with the focal flower added, which gives contrasting colour and a dynamic line. The grey suiban is from Seto City, just east of Nagoya where we spent four months in 1992 and where I took my first ikebana lessons. Seto is one of the famous 'Six ancient kilns'. It was such an important centre of ceramic production in the past that the generic term for ceramics is setomono, or 'things from Seto'.
Greetings from Christopher
2nd November 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment