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
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