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