JAPANESE FLOWERING QUINCE: CHAENOMELES

During the last week we spent in Queensland Laurie and I visited his cousin Nick and wife Sabrina, who live in Ninderry about 10 kms inland from the Sunshine Coast. The area lived up to its name on one of the two days we were there. It was wet and cold on the other. However, this is not meant as a serious complaint. The rain is what gives the area its lush subtropical climate and the temperature was in the teens Celsius.

Nick took us to the Noosa Botanic Gardens at Lake MacDonald, where I was able to take this fairly close photo of a Kookaburra. The 8 hectare gardens have a variety of indigenous and exotic trees and plants.  A group of enthusiastic volunteers provide a great support to this small regional garden.

In Nick and Sabrina's own garden I was impressed by this quite large Traveller's palm, Ravenala, which is a member of the Strelitzia family.

In this early stage the huge inflorescence is very spectacular, but not as attractive as it opens compared to Strelitzia Nicholi. It would make a wonderful ikebana sculpture without any addition!

Earlier in the week we visited the Queensland Art Gallery where we saw the extraordinary installations of Chiharu Shiota, an internationally active Japanese artist who has lived for the last 27 years in Berlin. I was interested to lean that in 1993-94 Shiota participated in an exchange program in the Canberra School of Art and remembered seeing her installation in the Art Gallery of South Australia last year. Below are some photos I took in the Queensland gallery.

Ghostly boat shapes float toward the ceiling in a mist of vertical lines.

A burnt grand piano and chairs in a black web rising to the ceiling.

A chair and desk with papers flying upward in a rain of vertical lines. My unsophisticated mind experienced this as a Harry Potter moment.

Elsewhere in the gallery I was delighted to see the current ikebana by a member of the Queensland Branch of the Sogetsu School.

This ikebana was created by Masako Morrison. Members of the Queensland Branch have been making ikebana in the Gallery every week since 1993. A very impressive achievement by a dedicated group of community volunteers.

We returned to Victoria a week ago, very pleased to have caught up with family and friends, and came home feeling refreshed. At my class in Melbourne, Jacqueline's exercise was to complete a Sogetsu curriculum exercise called Morimono, or "heaped things". The student is required to arrange fruit and/or vegetables on a flat surface. Flowers may be added. The placement is required to conform to Sogetsu principles of line, mass and space. 

I was really surprised when I turned around to see that Jacqueline had stood these three stems of celery simply by interlocking them without using pins. The single Anthurium made a strong colour contrast. 

In this morimono Jacqueline set a single spiral of orange peel and three segments on a black platter with a cut radish and a leaf segment from the celery. The camera angle conceals the fact that the orange peal lifts off the platter surface in a large spiralling curve.

In the garden I was delighted to see the mass of red Japanese Quince flowers when I looked out of the kitchen window. Always an excellent subject to use for a winter ikebana.

The warmth of the Queensland sunshine had confused my sense of the seasons while we were away. From our holiday environment I had set my students the exercise of making a Basic Slanting ikebana "Celebrating Spring". Oops! Let's celebrate Winter; not the cold but the beauty of bare branches and flowers. The Japanese Flowering Quince, Chaenomeles, from the garden is quite exceptionally beautiful in this season. I have added some leaves of an Australian native fern, possibly Zealandia pustulata, also from the garden.

Greetings from Christopher
31st July 2022

LINES and FOCAL POINT

  

Last weekend we drove up to the top of Mt Coot-tha, six kilometres from the Brisbane Central Business District. The name of the  mountain comes from the Yaggara language word for honey. The mountain was a place where the traditional aboriginal people of the area gathered honey in the pre-settler times. 

The cafe terrace at the top of the mountain provides a spectacular view to the coast, the city (as you can see) and to the hinterland in the west.

We had lunch in the cafe and I could not miss the opportunity to photograph this Brush Turkey up close when I noticed it on the roof of one of the older buildings. 

On Wednesday we walked along the river to the Brisbane Powerhouse Performing Art Centre. 

Along the way we came across a tree with one of the strangest fruit I have ever seen, hanging on very long vine-like stems. It looked like a bizarre art installation.

However, a little Google searching led me to find that it is appropriately called a Sausage Tree, Kiegella africana. 

A visit to the Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens was interesting for some other quite exotic trees.

This Ponytail, Beaucarnea recurvata, is certainly the largest I have ever seen.

The next beautiful, exotic tree I came across turned out to be Adansonia grandidieri. I was attracted by the large base that tapered quickly toward the top and the interesting texture of the bark.

When I looked this tree up on Wikipedia I was surprised to discover that it is a Giant Boabab from Madagascar. The mature form has extremely tall trunks of 25 to 30 metres with branches only at the top. This one is clearly just getting started. However, when I looked at the tree on the north side I realised that the bark had the same bronze-like sheen as the photos of mature trees in Madagascar.

The Mount Coot-tha garden also has a very beautiful Japanese garden that clearly benefits from the high rainfall of the region.

Last week I showed these photos of our host's terrace garden which has a number of Crucifix orchid plants with pink, orange...

...and red flowers. I decided that I would really like to make an ikebana using them in one of his Imari-ware ceramics and was granted permission. Imari-ware is a favourite traditional Japanese ceramic style of mine.

 

The vase is a ginger jar with an overall floral design in cobalt blue underglaze and (iron?) red overglaze. The cartouche  visible on the 'front' of the jar contains a floral design of a vase of flowers. I thought the red orchid would go particularly well with the reds on the jar and have used it for the principal line and the mass at the front. I also noticed that the Mexican Shrimp Plant, Justica brandegeeana, in the garden had a touch of salmon red colouring and have used it at the back of the arrangement to give depth to the work.

As I made the ikebana I realised that with the line on the right I was 'making' the space beneath. The focal point is the off-centre placement of the vase and the way the line divides up the rectangle of the photo creates extra interest in the photograph. The day after I made the ikebana I was inspired to take the photo below. 

 

Laurie was unaware of me taking this photo as he stood against one of the Brisbane Art Gallery forecourt walls. This image is also broken up into large flat areas. Lines in the pavement surface and the wall, as well as a shadow, lead the eye back to the focal point of the waiting figure.

Greetings from Christopher

23rd July 2022

QUEENSLAND SILVER WATTLE

 

Last week I wrote my Blog post while in an aeroplane flying to Queensland. Laurie and I have now spent the first week of our "Progress" up the southeast coast visiting friends and family. 

Initially we stayed inland from the Gold Coast, where one day we had a morning walk along the "The Broadwater".

I had never seen such a dense and beautifully spreading Casaurina as this one along the path.

I was surprised to see this Brushturkey. However, I soon realised that they have adapted to parts of the urban environment with its abundant food supply.

 

 This is also true of the Australian White Ibis.

Our friends, who live about 10 kms inland from the Gold Coast, have a house with a back yard that overlooks a reserve of remnant bushland. That is home to a small mob of Kangaroos.

In this photo, in the sunlight, the mother kangaroo has a Joey in her pouch, while her previous year's off-spring is in the foreground. The leaves at the bottom of the photo are plants in the house garden.

We are now in Brisbane and staying with a friend who has a small terrace garden with a wonderfully lush tropical feel. Dense planting along the fence line includes palms and Heliconias.

Over-flowing pots of succulents, Bougainvillea,...

...crucifix orchids, and more, make up for the lack of garden beds.

It is certainly enough to bring on a spot of what one of my students described as "Ikebana envy". Many gardeners would recognise the feeling.

Last week I mentioned that the Victorian Branch held a workshop that was presented by Vernisher Wooh from the Queensland Branch of the Sogetsu School. The theme of the morning workshop was, "using one kind of material...branches with fruit, berries or flowers on them." The focus of the workshop was on trimming. Given that it is winter, fruiting or berry bearing branches were not an option on the Surf Coast in Victoria.

However, I spied a beautiful Queensland Silver Wattle, Acacia podalyriifolia, in a friend's garden and was permitted to pick a branch.

In the event, the trimming turned out to be rather more radical than I, and some colleagues, had expected. The word 'simplified' was used and I realised that I had to do a major re-think of my 'trimming' expectation.

As you can see I completely removed all of the leaves from the branch, revealing the fine silvery branchlets but leaving the blossom on one of the branches. I really liked the transformation of the branch as it showed a different aspect of the beauty of the material.

Unfortunately, the change in my expectation of the anticipated workshop exercise revealed that my large vase was unsuited to the now-transformed material. The vase is too heavy-looking for the now fine-looking material. However, this was a workshop not an exhibition and workshops are where we have opportunities to learn.

I plan to publish photos from the workshop soon and will provide a link on next week's post.

Greetings from Christopher

17th July 2022
 

WINDSWEPT BRANCHES

As I write this today (Sunday 10th July) I must say I am having a 21st century experience. One that I find quite surreal. I am sitting in a long metal tube, flying at several thousand metres above ground level. If I could make the screen work on the back of the passenger seat in front of me I am sure I could tell you the correct altitude and the air speed. Having first checked my emails, I can now prepare this blog. Oh, I should probably say that Laurie and I are heading north for a couple of weeks to visit family and friends whom we haven't seen for four and more years. In part due to we all know what !  It begins with "C" and ends in "19".

Early in June I had set my Torquay students the task of making an ikebana using branch material in a suiban without using a

kenzan. This exercise works particularly well to show the lines of branches that have lost their leaves with the onset of winter. For these students this was a new experience. 

Marta used three branches of Elm, to which she added the last rose for the season from her garden. The green leaves and small, bright red bud gave a feeling of freshness and life to the arrangement.

Ròża used some straggly, windswept branches of Coastal Tea Tree, Leptospermum laevigatum. Given that these were dead branches and not needing water, placing the bases outside the suiban is permissible. A focus of colour was provided by two stems of yellow Chrysanthemums.

Coralie used multiple straight branches of Silver Pear, Pyrus sylvestrus, creating a striking design. The small green seedheads massed in the centre of the work are Dietes and provided a feeling of freshness.

My own ikebana follows this theme also. Yesterday I attended a Sogetsu School, Victorian Branch workshop. The afternoon theme was to make an ikebana using materials representing winter.

In advance I decided to look for some bare branches in the garden and found this very windswept-looking one on the Apricot tree. The branch is not very big; so to keep the focus on the dramatic line I decided to use my conical metal vessel. The fresh material is Narcissus that was growing in the creek at the back of our property. Unfortunately, the photo does not clearly show the small bunch at the back that gives the work depth.

Greetings from Christopher

10th July 2022

TWO BANKSIA FLOWERS

In my Melbourne class recently, the students had a variety of different exercises which reflect some of the range of ikebana exercises in the Sogetsu curriculum. The most immediately obvious way of describing this variety is to say that it varies from "naturalistic" to contemporary "freestyle" ikebana. There is a big shift between these two ideas. 

In naturalistic ikebana, the focus of the ikebanist is to refine the lines and elements of the material to reveal its natural form and the feeling to be represented or expressed. Contemporary freestyle ikebana focuses on discrete elements of the material, which are then used to create a design that may be completely abstract.

Julie completed a basic naturalistic nageire exercise in a tall vase. The particular difficulty in this case is that the student had also to practice the method of demonstrating ikebana. In the Sogetsu school it is a requirement that the demonstrator faces the audience and creates the ikebana from behind. The ikebana shows the autumn to winter transition, with most of the leaves on the branches having fallen.

Marisha's exercise was to incorporate artificial material in her ikebana. She has used a sheet of pink translucent wrapping-paper that shelters some of the materials and picks up the colour of the small Thryptomene flowers. Dendrobium orchid leaf stems provide the lines in the ikebana. 

Jacqueline's exercise was "Deconstruction and Re-arrangement" of the materials. She separated the petals, leaf clusters and stem from red roses. These elements were then placed to make a small table-top installation, with a bottle of red sparkling wine and a glass that spills red petals.

The following three students' exercise was to make an ikebana using repeating shapes in two vessels.

Eugenia made triangular forms with Umbrella Grass, Cyperus alternifolius. The contrasting material is a Bromeliad flower and the spent flowerheads of Clivea with small red berries - one of which emphasises the end of a line made by an Umbrella grass stem.

Margaret's ikebana was set in contrasting vessels of the same shape that have been linked together to create a sculptural form. The simple design made with just three leaves of variegated New Zealand Flax has a strong sense of movement. To maintain the strength of the design, no floral material is added.

The starting point for Marcia's ikebana was the large triangular vessel. She has emphasised its shape with multiple lines of Umbrella Grass that also connect to the smaller colour-matched vessel at the front. Nandina domestica leaves provide a contrasting mass at the front.

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Following the Ikebana International Melbourne photoshoot I posted about a couple of weeks ago, I deconstructed my ikebana to transport it back home. The bark that I had used as the main subject had started to dry out and curl. As a result I decided to re-set the banksia flowers only.

Here is my simple ikebana of two Coastal Banksia flowers,       B integrifolia, in a bowl-shaped vessel by the ceramic artist Greg Daly. I have added three small side stems of Tree Fern, Dicksonia antartica, to give some additional mass to the space within the bowl. The bowl itself has a rounded base so that it sits at a slight angle. It has a rich yellow and turquoise lustre glaze. The yellow and green of the plant materials complement the vibrant glaze.  

Greetings from Christopher
2nd July 2022