HARMONISING COLOURS

Autumn has come to the garden and some intense, warm colours have been developing over recent weeks.

This year some of the ornamental grape vine Vitis coignetiae leaves have turned a vivid orange rather than the usual red.

The red leaves of the tall Nandina domestica look vibrant against the majority that are green.

Elsewhere in the garden... 

 ...the Cootamundra Wattle, Acacia baileyana, has put forth buds of the blossom that will open in July. In the mean time its blue-grey foliage looks beautiful and I thought would be useful for the Ikebana International workshop that was held last Saturday.

I also noticed the berries on a neighbour's Pittosporum and decided they would be suitable, as the theme of the workshop was "Harmonising Colours".

In our garden these spent seed pods on the Bursaria spinosa also caught my eye as having a subtle warm autumn colour.

At the workshop Yuko Asano, a teacher of the Wafu School of Ikebana, explained her school's approach to the subject of 'Harmonising Colours'. In this case using two vases. She said that it was usual to use a large and a small vase and that the materials in one of them would be visually stronger and the other softer. 

This is my ikebana from the workshop, using the plants described above, with the addition of some very brightly coloured maple leaves from a street tree. The smaller vessel has the Cootamundra Wattle as its principal material, some maple leaves and a small spray of maroon orchids. Most of the colours are tonally close while the small amount of green and blue-grey leaves provide a contrast.

Photos from the workshop can be seen via this link, Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter workshop.

Greetings from Christopher

25th April 2021

JAPANESE ANENOME and AGAVE

At night in Torquay we can often hear rather heavy footsteps on the roof. No harm is done to the roof, but I always wonder about how the apricot tree and the Lorraine Lee rose will be coping... 

...with the feasting of this Brush Tailed Possum and his family.  The leaves in the lower part of the photo are at the top of the apricot tree with its tender new leaves that the possums prefer. The mother and baby were just out of sight when I took this photo.

Elsewhere in the garden Margaret's Japanese Anemone, Eriocapitella hupehensis, is starting to spread and this year has multiple flowers. 

So lovely in close-up.

At a recent class,  Marisha's exercise was an ikebana in which shapes are repeated.

She used Umbrella grass, Cyperus alternifolius, and two Belladonna Lily, Amaryllis belladonna, flowers in a ceramic vessel. I thought the work met the criteria but suggested that it could be made more dynamic.

Her second working of the material gave a strong sense of movement to the ikebana.

In the same class, Jacqueline created an ikebana arrangement in two vessels. She has used Gypsophila and white Carnations, Dianthus caryophyllus, creating a mass with the Gypsophila within which she has set the carnations

Last  weekend I attended a Master Class workshop with my colleague Emily Karanikolopoulos. The serious fun of this exercise was going to a workshop only taking one's hasami (Japanese secateurs) and not knowing what the exercise was going to be. Everyone had the same principal material, variegated Agave in this instance, and some floral material. We drew lots that determined which bunch of Agave and which vase we had to use.

The Agave I was given was relatively small and flexible having been cut two days before and not kept in water. I used the natural curves of the two tallest pieces and exaggerated the curve of the third piece, placing it on the outside surface of the the vase. It conveniently hides the base of the tallest piece, which is also sitting on the outside of the vase while the righthand piece sits within the vase. I placed the upright Agave so that their curves complement each other and created an interesting space in which are set the two stems of Japanese Anenome. The Agave is secured with a short length of bamboo skewer and a single pin.

More photos from Emily's Master Class can be seen on this link.

Greetings from Christopher

18th April 2021

 

FROM THE WORKSHOPS

When Laurie and I traveled to South Australia three weeks ago we went slowly so that we could have some time in places that we don't often see. In the 700 kilometres between the 'Surf coast' of Victoria and Adelaide in South Australia the landscape is mostly flat plains given over to agriculture. However, about one third of the way north-west from Torquay is a sandstone mountain range, Gariwerd-Grampians, in the Grampians National Park. It is the traditional land of two aboriginal groups and had been actively managed for at least 22,000 years. The mountains have a high rainfall due to the moist westerly winds that occur particularly in winter. As a result it is an area rich in flora and fauna.

Laurie photographed this kangaroo in the Zumsteins Historic Area.on the MacKenzie River. Being such a popular picnic spot this kangaroo at least was used to humans and relatively tame.

 

This small section of the MacKenzie River was a tranquil haven in the early morning.

When we were in Adelaide, Ray (the Director of the South Australian Sogetsu Branch), took us for a walk in a park near her house where she showed us this 'Canoe Scar Tree'. The tree stood upright until it was naturally uprooted in 2010. Before European settlement, in some parts of Australia aboriginal people would remove a large section of bark from a living tree in a single piece to make a canoe. This one was 4.2 metres long and 1.2 metres wide. 

 

 

In the small country town of Coonalpyn in South Australia we were delighted to see these silo murals that were painted by Guido van Helten in 2017.

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To ikebana, and the two workshops I presented in Adelaide recently.

In this candid photo Ray and I are seen on either side of the 'Welcoming Ikebana' that greeted the participants.

The first workshop had the theme of using a Tsubo (spherical) vase. At the time I demonstrated two of the most common techniques for securing the branches. In this photo it is the technique of intersecting two split branches. The other technique I demonstrated was to fix a split branch onto a cross-bar within the vase. In that case the branch material is on one side only as you will see in the following photos of some of the participants work. The first name of the participant is underneath the photo.

Cherie.

Heather.

Helen.

Kathryn.

Maureen.

Paola.

Ray.

Rhonda.

Vera.

The theme of the second workshop was to incorporate text into the work. 
 

Heather made small roles of paper, with text on them, torn from a magazine.

Helen created a massed arrangement with Haemanthus and used two conical scrolls of paper as the line in her ikebana.

Lea used aspidistra leaves in her ikebana. Into one of them she had cut the word "Sogetsu", which sat above two gold sprayed leaves.

Paola used paper with ikebana related text, She created fans by pleating them and also made an origami crane which was not included in the photo.

Rhonda, wrote the words 'Reaching, Searching, Skywards' on the leaves to represent her ikebana journey.

Vera's ikebana made a literary allusion using the word 'Journey' to reference a 10th century Japanese novel. The ikebana also symbolised a zig-zagging bridge across an iris pond.

Ray created an abstract ikebana representing Morse code. The landscape symbolises the risk of climate change. 

In Morse code, dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot, spells out SOS. 

Greetings from Christopher

11th April 2021

TEN YEARS ON

 

Last week I showed photos of the Amazon Waterlily, Victoria Amazonica, in the Botanic Gardens of South Australia Adelaide. What is also wonderful on quite a different scale is this tropical rainforest, also in the Adelaide Gardens.

 

The rainforest is in the Bicentennial Conservatory that was opened in 1989. My first visit to this building was in the early 1990's and I remember that the tallest growing plants were some vines that reached almost to the apex of the structure. Now, the palms have got to the top. 

At a lower level is this beautiful fern-shaded pool. This sort of environment always reminds me of Papua New Guinea where I worked as a volunteer in 1966, straight out of school.

Also in Adelaide, until 16th May, is a wonderful survey of paintings by the early 20th century modernist painter Clarice Beckett at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Her misty, atmospheric paintings of everyday scenes around bayside Melbourne are captivating and really do draw the viewer into quiet contemplation of the scene.

On Saturday last I had the pleasure of presenting two workshops at the invitation of Ray, the Director of the Australian Sogetsu Teachers' Association (South Australian Branch). The first workshop were technical exercises of two methods for securing branches in a tsubo vase. This is a wide-bellied vessel with a relatively narrow opening at the top. In this instance, for both fixing methods, the ikebanist uses hasami (secateurs) only. 

  

In my first example I used two branches from the same, unidentified, eucalyptus tree. On the right-hand side I have used branches that are in flower and on the left-hand side I used branches that only had seed pods from the last season's flowering. I have removed all the leaves so that the two different aspects of the same material are contrasted. In the centre is a mass of red Alstroemeria flowers and leaves. The red picks up the splashes of glaze on the vase. The two principal branches have been split and intersected to stabilise them in position.

In my second example I have again used an unidentified eucalyptus. Like many eucalyptus trees, this one is especially beautiful because of the silvery-grey bloom on the new branch tips and leaves. The grey of the stems complements the ceramic vase and the contrasting pink of the Alstroemeria. In this second technique the principal branch is split onto a cross-bar that is at right angles to it within the vase. Thus it is possible to have a 'one-sided' ikebana.

In the afternoon I set an exercise of my own invention. It is 'ikebana incorporating text'. I deliberately do not give any instruction as to how the exercise is to be approached. The challenge is for the attendees to create their own interpretation of the exercise. I presented two possible ways of approaching the idea in my demonstration examples. 

 

The first idea was to make a 'vase' using paper on which text is written, in this case newspaper. My thinking was that the text was like a decoration on a vase. I deliberately chose a foreign language newspaper, Italian, with text  that had no direct relation to the botanical material, but simply functioned as a form of patterning. The botanical material is a deep maroon Geranium which complimented both the pink and blue background to some of the text.

My second example used two crossing stems of very dark maroon canna leaves, contrasted with Gypsophila in a shallow black ceramic bowl. The text is the word 'Sogetsu' written on the large leaf on the left side.

The workshop was held in a large, airy community hall and gave me the opportunity of making a 'welcoming ikebana' to greet the participants. 

From Ray's store we made a base using some large pieces of driftwood which stood on fine points making them appear quite light. Then we added a large branch covered with gold paper that she had made in the past. This gave a celebratory feeling. Finally, two kinds of Nandina leaves were added to give a spreading mass of colour in the centre of the work. The overall height of the work was about two metres at its highest point.

Next week I will include some photos of the Branch members' ikebana at the workshops. 

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This link is to an obituary for Philip Keon, whose funeral was held last week. It was written by Emily Karanikolopoulos and posted on her blog.

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Ten years ago today, I attended my first class at the Sogetsu Head Quarters as the third recipient of the Norman and Mary Sparnon Endowment Scholarship. That day was a special event being the first class at the re-opening of the School following the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami that had occurred on the 11th March 2011. The class was taken by the Iemoto, Akane Teshigahara. The aftermath of the natural disaster was an emotionally difficult time to be in Japan. In spite of that I remain conscious of the great privilege afforded to me and remain grateful for the opportunities and friendships I experienced.

Greetings from Christopher

4th April 2021