This week I am writing from Adelaide in South Australia where on Saturday I presented workshops to the local Sogetsu Branch. Laurie and I decided to take the opportunity to drive to South Australia and have a short holiday break, being our first time to leave Victoria since July 2019.
This is the very flat landscape of the Coorong, a lake and lagoon system south east of the mouth of the Murray River.
The area is especially significant for the Pelican rookeries at Jack Point in the Coorong, which are the largest breeding rookeries of the Australian Pelican in the country.
I could not help but notice these bright pink and green plants growing in the sand. I thought they looked like Euphorbia...
...and this was confirmed when I consulted Wikipedia. Commonly known as Sea spurge, Euphorbia paralias (originally from the Mediterranean region) has become naturalised in parts of Australia. I am guessing that the highly saline soil (sand), with lots of calcium from the sea shell grit, has caused the intense pink in the older leaves.
This dramatically curved trunk of a dead tree immediately caught the attention of my ikebana eyes. When most of the plants were low mounded bushes, it seemed to link the sky, sea and earth.
In Adelaide we visited the Adelaide Botanic Gardens for the first time since 2004. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the giant Amazonian water lily, Victoria amazonica, had been given a new home: a very modern, climate-controlled glass-house.
It was wonderful to see the quite breath-taking, gigantic leaves, up to I.6 metres in diameter, floating in their re-furbished pond.
Even more exciting was to see an open flower floating on the water's surface, a first-time experience for me. I thought the large flower looked voluptuous and extravagant in its beauty.
* * * * *
A couple of weeks ago at my Geelong class where the students are at different stages in their ikebana journeys, I took the photographs below, of their work.
Maree was finishing the early part of the curriculum and had the exercise of making a single arrangement while using two suibans as the vessels. Each of the two integrated arrangements are one of the 'basic' exercises from the beginning of the curriculum. It was an interesting discovery that the Pampas Grass, Cotraderia selloana, flowerhead could be cut into short sections that worked well as the Jushi (filling material).
The exercise Jo had was a revision of technique; in this case using a vertical fixture to secure the branch material in a tall vessel.
Tess made an arrangement of Miniature Ikebana, in which elements of botanical materials are set in very small vessels. The unusual items among her vessels were a box, a stone with a scooped depression and a large cowrie shell.
I set the senior students the exercise of making "Ikebana Without a Vessel".
Christine decided to use two branches of Nandina which she inverted on the table. Doing so highlighted the structure of the leaf branches. A lot of pruning was need to make the lines clear. Achieving stability was difficult and was managed with only a single piece of thick wire that passed through the longer stem and then inside the smaller stem of the second branch, which is on the left.
Maureen made a structure with some lichen encrusted branches and created a mass with blue-grey succulent leaves. She added a bright pink focal point with a sprayed dry agapanthus flowerhead.
Ellie made a sculptural form using coloured wire mesh. To this she added two dried lotus stems and a single, red-coloured dried, lotus seed-head.
Greetings from Christopher
28th March 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment