HORIZONTAL IKEBANA

Much of Australia is experiencing heat wave conditions this weekend. The temperature in Mildura in the north west of the state (Victoria) was almost 45 degrees celsius yesterday, 18 degrees above the November average. Here on the south west coast it has been cool and wet! Today we are expecting a maximum of 17 C. However we are definitely moving toward summer.

This photo is of the native clematis, C. microphylla, that grows on our fence and which flowered in early spring.

Six to eight weeks later, the fluffy seed heads have formed. This photo was taken on the cliff tops a couple of weeks ago. 

On the same walk we came across this Xanthorrhoea minor - subspecies lutea, in full flower.

I was pleased to see these two examples of X. minor - lutea, flowering at the side of a golf course, in the goldfields area in central Victoria last week. Now that we are able to travel freely, Laurie and I went there for a few days having spent the last several months 'confined' to Torquay. 

As it was early evening, a large number of kangaroos had come out onto the fairways of the golf course to graze. These two were very wary of me and bounded away just after I took the photo. There are some other Kangaroos in the distance. 

The goldfields area has long been an area of pottery production. One place of particular interest is the Bendigo Pottery, that was established in 1858 by a Scottish potter when he discovered high quality clay in the area. This was at the time of the Australian gold rushes and, no doubt, producing functional ware locally would have overcome the need to import from Britain, Europe or the U.S.A.

With the revival of Studio Pottery in the late 1960's, a number of potters set up studios and kilns in this area of Victoria and it continues to be a place of much creative activity. 

I was very pleased to meet a sculptor and ceramic artist, Mel Ogden (website), who is currently experimenting with slab constructed forms for ikebana vessels. She uses subtle pale glazes of her own making. (Link to: Mel's instagram account)

 

I was really drawn to this bold structural form and was pleased to be able to add it to my collection of handmade ceramics.

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In the garden I noticed the Acanthus mollis flower-heads were probably at their peak and one of the taller ones had two side branches that had an appealing curve. I have arranged two of them so that their lines cross and added some magenta Buddleja that picked up the colour of the Acanthus sepals.

However, this is the idea that I really had in mind. I was interested to use the Acanthus arranged horizontally. This time it is a secondary element supporting the line of the Buddleja that is the principle subject of the ikebana. This horizontal style of  arrangement is a subject from the 2008 Sogetsu revised curriculum and works well when a bold design is desired.

Greetings from Christopher

29th November 2020

 

RED HOT POKER

As we sat down to dinner a couple of nights ago, I noticed a couple of magpies fussing around in an odd way in the garden. On closer investigation I saw what had caught their interest.

 

Spike, the echidna, was in the garden looking for ants. I have never seen such interest from magpies before and was wondering if they were hoping that Spike might also unearth some worms for them. The magpies kept a short distance from the echidna and finally flew off when they became aware of my presence. 

In the meantime, Spike seemed to be rather oblivious of the magpies and me and continued his search for his preferred food.

On the ikebana front, here are two student photos to share with you.

Jacqueline created this ikebana a couple of months ago. Her exercise, from the advanced part of the Sogetsu curriculum, was to make an ikebana that takes into account the shape of the vase. She has created curved lines with a vine to echo the spherical vase. The small mass of white Azeleas acts as a focal point in the arrangement.

Ellie made the ikebana arrangement below on a topic that I set. 

The students were asked to create a sculpture and then add some fresh material. Ellie has used wire mesh that she cut into different shapes and coloured: yellow, rust pink or left uncoloured. The fresh material is a variegated Hosta leaf and the yellow-flowering Jerusalem sage, Phlomis fruticosa.

Ellie said that she took her inspiration from this photo of a hat in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. The hat is by the Melbourne-based milliner Melissa Jackson. It is worth noting that inspiration may come from anywhere and ikebana practitioners are encouraged to engage with other creative arts as well as the natural world.

My own ikebana this week could be seen as a rather wild extension of millinery as inspiration. However, that was not the case. My eye had been caught by a single flower of a Red Hot Poker, Kniphofia uvaria (I think) growing wild. I have since learnt that it is classified as an environmental weed in some places. The flower inflorescence has an eye-catching intensity. 

 

The leaves of this particular variety of Kniphofia  are long and broad however they are rather weak. In my ikebana I set the flower stem at an angle to emphasise the slight bend in the stem; two days later, the flower head had lifted upright. The leaves are Costal sword sedge, Lepidosperma gladiatum, which I have arranged in large open loops to give a counter-balancing volume to the line.

The spherical vessel is by Don Jones.

Greetings from Christopher

22nd November 2020

RESCUED FROM THE UNDERGROWTH

The late spring weather continues to be quite variable, swinging from cool and wet to warm but humid, as a result of the welcome rain. Today's temperature is predicted to be thirty two degrees celsius. Consequently, the garden is looking lush at the moment. More of that later.

First, some ikebana photos sent from my students. 

This very strong-looking ikebana is by Jacqueline. The exercise she was working on from the Sogetsu curriculum was a "Composition of mass and line". It is important in this exercise that one of the elements is dominant to preserve the sense of asymmetry. Jacqueline's strong line made with an inverted branch is contrasted with a small mass of white chrysanthemum. The black vase visually stabilises the line.

By way of an unplanned contrast, Ellie's visually light ikebana is an exercise I set that was to include "dried and fresh materials in the same arrangement". The two elements of roses and fine dried grass heads, are set in seperate vases but are unified by the use of colour-matched vases and being placed on a lacquer-ware tray. In addition the moon-like perspex disk seems to embrace the whole. 

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Getting back to the strong, spring growth in the garden...

...among the plants in flower is a bush of 'Scotch' Broom, Cytisus scoparius. It came from my parents' garden and I have always liked the bright flowers and its perfume that carries across the garden on a warm day. The perfume of this particular Broom seems less cloying than some; even so, it can be somewhat overwhelming in a small room. Apart from its fragrance, from an ikebana point of view I rather like the gently curving lines of the flower stems. Perhaps these are more pronounced because of the prevailing winds on the coast.

A couple of days ago I suddenly thought of these three blue glass vases as being a good contrast, as well as suiting the curves of the Broom stems. I have set the vases asymmetrically and arranged the flower stems so that the tips of the two outer groups are curving in toward the largest mass of flowers in the centre of the ikebana.

 

This is another example of the spring growth in the garden. Some years ago it was necessary to transplant a climbing Albertine rose onto the side fence. I had also planted a Pandorea pandorana vine which has now all but swamped the rose. Next winter I will plant a rose cutting elsewhere in the garden. The Albertine is visible from our bathroom and in recent mornings I have thought I should cut some of the beautiful short lived blossoms. Below is an ikebana arrangement using roses rescued from the undergrowth (or overgrowth!).

I decided to contrast the delicate roses with some small bleached branchlets of Coast Tea Tree, Leptospermum laevigatum. The branches also have a small amount of green lichen which complements the green of the Celadon vase by Colin Browne.

Greetings from Christopher

15th November 2020

BLUE IRISES

 

Several weeks ago Laurie and I noticed a nesting pair of Masked Lapwings, in a vacant block of land in Torquay that has been fenced. We were really pleased with the sight, as these birds nest on the ground and often do so on the wide grass verges in the streets, known locally as 'nature strips'. In such situations the birds and their chicks are vulnerable to predation by cats and dogs, as well as other predatory birds. I was very anxious a few weeks a go when I saw a man mowing the grass on the vacant block, but then relieved to see that he was carefully leaving an undisturbed space around the nesting birds.

The good outcome was that the eggs hatched, and yesterday we saw two chicks, outside the fenced block, roaming the 'nature strip' in search for insects...

...under the watchful eye of their parents. Both of the photos are somewhat grainy as they were taken on my camera's 'zoom' function and then further 'zoomed' when cropped.

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Today Melbourne city is expecting to come out of 112 days of lockdown. It has been a great effort. The state has now had eight days straight with no new Corona virus infections recorded. During this time, face to face classes have not been permitted and so some of my students have continued to practise their ikebana at home and email me photographs that I have critiqued. It is not the same as being together in the class-room; however, it has kept us engaged.

In recent weeks I set the exercise of 'changing the appearance of leaves', by curling, folding or cutting them. Ellie created this two-vessel ikebana in which she gave a new and lively appearance to these red edged Cordyline leaves, to which were added two Chrysanthemum flowers as focal points. 

Jacqueline's task was the Sogetsu curriculum exercise of making an ikebana arrangement in which a surface is created by the massing of lines. She has used the strong stems of Agapanthus with two lines to each side of the main mass to create some space within the work.

My own ikebana was inspired by seeing a large mass of dark blue Irises in the garden of one of my students who lives in Torquay. Val was generous enough to allow me to pick some, which I did with care. I chose not to use any of the iris leaves as to do so would deprive the bulb of nourishment for the rest of the growing season.

I arranged the iris in a naturalistic manner with two buds at the highest point. To complement the deep colour of the flowers I have set them with three Acanthus leaves, which have a glossy dark green surface. The Shino-glazed suiban by the New Zealand ceramic artist, Elena Renka, was chosen to contrast with the materials.

Greetings from Christopher

8th November 2020