AUTUMNAL FRUIT: JAPANESE QUINCE

 

This week I set my students the exercise of making an "Autumn Ikebana". The night time temperatures have certainly started to become cooler over the last few weeks, although we have been blessed with some warm days. Thus perfect autumn weather with no wind and bright sunshine.

I must admit when I think of autumn my first thought is of the leaf colour change in many northern hemisphere deciduous plants.This thought is really a reflection of my Anglo-Australian heritage where we were taught as children that leaves in autumn would change colour. The truth is that I hardly ever saw such a thing until my teens.

This was because my childhood home, shown above in about 1960, was built on a new estate carved out of a bare paddock and exposed to salt-laden winds, particularly in winter and spring. Deciduous northern hemisphere trees could not tolerate this harsh environment. The hills in the distance are now fully covered by suburban development, their gardens predominately planted with Australian native trees and shrubs.

When Laurie and I visited this garden in Maine USA in 2014 I felt almost overwhelmed by the saturated colours of the autumn foliage.

As Australian practitioners of ikebana we are blessed with the choice of using exotic northern hemisphere plants as well as those plants native to our country. This week the focus was on the exotics.

 

Judy made a one-material ikebana using branches of one of the Oak family, which are complemented by the colours in the hand-made ceramic vase.

Róża used three stems from her Blueberry bush and two Hydrangea flowers. Set in a wide ceramic bowl, this ikebana was best viewed from above.

Tess used branches of Smokebush, Cotinus, and some drying Sedum as a textural contrast, set in a hand-made ceramic vase.

Helen M. also used a leafy branch of Oak which she combined with some Dwarf Nandina and a mass of maroon Kangaroo Paw, Angiozanthos, in a ceramic vase.

Maureen had been offered some Lotus pods by a friend, which became the starting point of her ikebana. Fruiting branches or stems are another material that is appropriately suggestive of autumn. She has then added New Zealand Flax and Canna leaves to the handmade ceramic vase.

In her ikebana Ellie used Ornamental Grape vine for her principal line. She also used two pieces of fruit, a bright yellow gourd and small orange coloured pear. 

In the garden last week I was surprised to notice that, this year, two of the Japanese Quince, Chaenomeles, plants had produced a single fruit each.

This one was growing directly on a large branch that I was not willing to cut. However, the second fruit was on a suitably small branch. These fruits are a striking yellow with a rather waxy bloom. A suitable subject for my autumn ikebana

Because of the yellow colour of the fruit I chose this cobalt blue glazed ceramic vessel and positioned the fruit to highlight the colour contrast. The branch lines are from the same bush and the mass is of Hydrangea leaves that have coloured in the cold night air.

Greetings from Christopher

30th April 2022

 

BIRCH-WOOD SCULPTURE

At the end of January I posted some photos from the exhibition "Found and Gathered" at NGV Australia at Federation Square, showing the work of Lorraine Connelly-Northey and Rosalie Gascoigne. Both artists have used found objects as their principal material. Connelly-Northey in particular uses weathered metal and wire extensively, to reference traditional objects from her Aboriginal heritage. With these materials she "...addresses history and race, and the importance of safeguarding traditional knowledge..."  (The National. New Australian Art. #NationalAU)

When I visited the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery three weeks ago I was delighted to see some of her smaller work for sale. The objects were referencing traditional 'string bags', or narbong, but in this case made from weathered metal and rusty wire.

I have hung the narbong in the living room niche and placed some Dwarf Nandina domestica and Honesty, Lunaria annua, in the small bag.  

The colour and texture of the weathered metal is beautiful, and is complemented by the botanical materials

On Friday I participated in an ikebana exhibition that has been organised by my colleague Emily Karanikolopoulos in the All Nations Foyer at the Box Hill Town Hall. The ikebana works are by Emily, her students and some other colleagues who have attended master classes conducted by Emily.  This link to Emily's blog includes a flyer at the bottom of the post with details of the exhibition and demonstrations on the next two Saturdays.

Because I was in the first group to set up at the exhibition I can only include a couple of photos.

This ikebana by Emily is one she described to me as her signature style. She has made a structure creating a surface composed with stems of Umbrella grass, Cyperus alternifolius, and added two stems of Crucifix orchids as focal points.

Vicky Kalokathis' ikebana featured the wandering lines of bean pods and dwarf Nandina as the focal points in two matching conical metal vessels.

Mary's ikebana is a student exercise from the curriculum: Taking into account the shape of the vessel. The materials are Umbrella grass and Lisianthus, Eustoma.

Emily asked me to make two ikebana works for the exhibition. The first of these is in a a large Shigaraki storage vessel.

I have used a large piece of weathered Moonah, Melaleuca lanceolata, and some Nandina domestica from the garden, the tips of which have started to turn red with the coming of autumn. What is not visible are two stems of white Phalaenopsis orchids which are at the back of the ikebana. However, they are visible in the mirror behind the work when the viewer stands directly in front.

In this view the backdrop blocks out the mirror but now the orchids blend in to the white of the backdrop.

The second work was made to be shown in a tall, narrow glass case. I was keen to protect the thin-walled vessel made by the Echizen ceramic artist, Yutaka Nakamura. The dimensions of the glass case made it necessary for the structure to be narrow.

 

I created this structure using mostly straight lengths of Silver Birch, which I have doweled together. The photo above is of the finished structure taken at home. For the exhibition I added a small mass of red dwarf Nandina and three lines of Coastal Sword Sedge, Lepidosperma gladiatum for the sense of freshness that the green material gives.

 

This is a close up of the finishing touches in the glass case. It was impossible to photograph the full ikebana work satisfactorily because of the multiple reflections in the glass display case.

Greetings from Christopher

24th April 2022

AUTUMNAL HYDRANGEA

After leaving the southern highlands of New South Wales last Sunday we travelled to Sydney for three nights. We caught up with one of my cousins, with Laurie's sister and brother-in-law, and with Inge, a long-term friend of Laurie's who had worked with him in East New Britain PNG when he was there in the early 1970s. Inge had planted a grevillea outside her kitchen window that had flourished.

And is hugely appreciated by the visiting Rainbow Lorikeets.

I took these photos from the kitchen window at a distance of about four metres.

After leaving Sydney we began our journey back home, stopping overnight at Albury on the north bank of the Murray River.

In the late afternoon light the river looked serene. However, we noticed that it was flowing strongly because of the recent heavy rain in the catchment area.

We were advised by a couple not to go swimming because the water was very cold, having been released from the large Hume reservoir immediately up-stream from Albury. 

There were large flocks of Corellas, some of which I caught drinking from the river while perched on a partially submerged branch.

 

On another branch of the same tree a corella seemed to be keeping its distance from this native Australian White Ibis.

So from fauna to flora. Upon our return to Torquay I was pleased to note the pot plants had survived under the care of our neighbour Margie. 

I was also interested to see the development of some autumn colour with the coming of cooler night-time temperatures. These leaves are from one of the Hydrangeas that have finished flowering. 

However, before going away I had been keeping my eye on this Hydrangea whose flower has become an amazingly luminous pink. I was hoping it would survive while we were away so that I could use it as an ikebana subject.

I have set a single stem of Hydrangea in a spherical ceramic vase and contrasted the soft floral material with a small Birchwood sculpture I made some time ago.

The vase was made by the Adelaide ceramic artist Don Jones.

Greetings from Christopher

17th April 2022

FROM THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS of NEW SOUTH WALES

Last week Laurie and I spent four days in Canberra, Australia’s national capital. We visited the National Gallery of Australia to see the exhibition of paintings by Jeffrey Smart. The exhibition is to celebrate the centenary of his birth and is the most comprehensive retrospective of his work ever put together. It is a ‘must see’ if you are interested in Australian art and have the opportunity to visit Canberra.

The first two days were beautifully sunny and I took this photo of this large spherical sculpture that is suspended between the Art Gallery and the High Court of Australia.

Later we walked up to Parliament House. I took this interesting view of the axis from the parliament to the National War Memorial on the opposite side of Lake Burley Griffin.

Here is Laurie in the forecourt of Parliament House…

…and again overlooking Canberra from the Black Mountain lookout.

We then travelled on to the Southern Highlands where the colours of autumn are becoming apparent. These following photographs were taken in the garden of the guest house we stayed at in Bundanoon.

The flowerbed in the middle of the turning circle was an abundance of colourful autumn leaves and Japanese anemones, Eriocapitella hupehensis.

  

The Anemones were both the white variety..

...and pink.

The pendulous bell of this small flower was particularly enchanting.

Again “from the archives” this week's ikebana is one I made some years ago. 

It was an early experiment in the then new exercise a "Vertical Ikebana". The materials were some gathered stems of Corky Elm and Ornamental Grape, Vitis, leaves from the garden. The black ceramic vessel is from Seto City in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Seto is one of the Six Ancient Kilns in Japan where pottery has been made for 800 years.  

Belated greetings from

Christopher

11th April 2022

FROM THE ARCHIVE

On Wednesday I attended the opening day of the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show (MIFGS). There were many glad hearts as this major event had been cancelled in each of the last two years. This year there are a number of ikebana displays by both groups and individuals. One of them was prepared by the Melbourne Chapter of Ikebana International, which has exhibited at the MIFGS every year since 2003. The theme that was chosen by I.I. Melbourne Chapter for this year's installation was inspired by a Haiku written by the famous Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694). In translation the Haiku  reads,

"Bright red

        the pitiless sun

Autumn winds."

This photo shows the whole of the I.I. Melbourne stand taken from the elevated position of the north-side gallery above the central nave of the huge Royal Exhibition Building (built 1879-1880). This rather distant view is the only one from which all of the individual ikebana works can be clearly seen.

However, they are meant to be seen as a group of ikebana works from six different schools relating to each other through the common theme set by the Haiku and by the use of red in all arrangements. For a photographer another difficulty is the fact that, without side walls to the site, the ikebana works on the side can be lost in the background of adjacent displays. The truly important lesson is that ikebana is to be experienced live, in three dimensions, as it relates to its setting and sometimes through our sense of smell as well.

When we look at a photograph of ikebana it has become translated and the experience is of a two dimensional art work. The photographs below are like discrete, fragmented elements of a collage. We have to imagine how they create a greater whole when seen and experienced close together in lived experience.

Rachel Lok, Shogetsudo Koryu

 

Jennie Stuart, Sogetsu School

Yuko Asano, Wafu Ikebana

Felicia Huang, Ohara School

Helen Marriott, Shogetsudo Koryu

Lucy Papas, Sogetsu School

Josephine Tan, Ohara School

Angie Chau, Ikenobo School

*          *          *          *          *

On Thursday Laurie and I travelled to Shepparton in north central Victoria before travelling across the border into New South Wales. 

What then is this mass of interlocking fine yellow stems? We saw this material being blown across the road as we drove in southern New South Wales. I now know it to be the seed heads of  the "Blown Grass", Lachnagrostis filiformis, native to Australia, New Zealand and Polynesia. I have seen it before where we live...

... but never in this kind of quantity.

The blown grass was not the only eye-catching sight in Yerong Creek NSW, where we also saw the recently-painted murals on the town's water tower.

The painting of this mural is like those we had seen last year in Western Victoria on the wheat silos.

The Yerong Creek Water Tower Art is a striking mural that captures the town's past, present and future hopes.

 

Third view.

Finally, as I am travelling and have not had the opportunity to make an ikebana this week, here is an ikebana I made in January 2011 (from the Archive). 

It is made from material I gathered around the property of our  friends David and Catherine who reside in Tasmania.  The materials are an interestingly twisted dried branch and Bursaria spinosa. The vessel is by the Victorian ceramic artist Terunobu Hirata.

Greetings from Christopher

3rd April 2022