AOTEAROA - WEEK TWO

A couple of weeks ago my friends Heather and John had told me about the mountain in the photo below. They said some claimed it to be the most symmetrical mountain in the world. As we were driving away from New Plymouth a couple of days ago we were treated to this wonderful sight. 

It is Mount Taranaki on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand viewed from its north side.

This photo was taken from its east side confirming the symmetricality of Mount Taranaki. If you follow this link you can scroll down to read about the Maori legend concerning the mountain.

We had travelled to this part of New Zealand specifically to visit the museum that holds the recovered Taranaki panels which I had heard about in a radio conversation only a month ago. They come from the gable of an elevated store house. The museum at New Plymouth has an impressive and moving display of a number of beautifully carved panels that are believed to have been hidden in swamps as long ago as the late 1700's. Five panels from one particular storehouse had been illegally smuggled out of the country and sold to a private collector in Europe. They were returned to New Zealand in late 2014.

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To ikebana.  

At my Melbourne class two weeks ago, Marisha's exercise was to make an ikebana for a special occasion or location. Her vertical ikebana was planned to be placed on the altar of a Buddhist temple she attends. It has an appropriate feeling of formality.

Jacqueline's exercise was an ikebana 'Using a Variety of Materials'. It is a challenging exercise to achieve a satisfactory balance like this, when we so often use only one or two materials in ikebana.

Here is an example in point. For Eugenia I had set the exercise of making an ikebana incorporating driftwood. She has set a visually strong piece of wood on the edge of a shallow dish-shaped suiban, and added two stems of Banksia with two small flowers. The suiban contains only water revealing its reflective surface making a counterbalance to the mass of the driftwood.

 

This post is brief as I have spent the last two days preparing for and conducting workshops for my ikebana colleagues in the Wellington Branch of the Sogetsu school.

Greetings from Christopher

26th March 2023

 

KINTSUGI

A Change of location.

Today Roadside Ikebana comes to you from Aotearoa New Zealand. This weekend we visited the Auckland War Memorial Museum in the Auckland Domain parkland.

The first major exhibition space documents and celebrates the progressive migration of Polynesian peoples from south east Asia across the western Pacific Ocean starting 3,000 - 1,000 BCE and finally coming to New Zealand 800 years ago. This large interior which has been installed in the Museum, is a Wharenui the large meeting house of a Marea, a fenced-in complex of carved buildings and grounds.

The traditional patterning on these roof beams features predominantly flowing recursive lines. The richness of the symbolic carving and painted decoration creates a powerful atmosphere of the Maori community life.

Both Laurie and I, separately, had spent time in our early working lives in Papua New Guinea and, as a consequence, have strong feelings of respect for the cultures of the South Pacific. 

Elsewhere, in the Auckland Art Gallery...

...my attention was caught by this lovely, somewhat surrealistic sculpture. A tree is "growing" through a wall above which hangs a wire. Small birds sit on the wire and branches of the tree. All made from steel. The title of the sculpture, by New Zealand artist Shona Rapira-Davies is: There Are No Bees In My Garden.

Speaking of gardens and surrealism, thank you to the person who recommended the Hamilton gardens, where we went this afternoon.

The entrance to the Surrealist Garden looks like this, and it is quite disturbing to walk across these tiles.

Don't you feel overwhelmed after a day digging in the garden when things get all out of proportion?

Poor Laurie!
Shades of "Through the Looking Glass"...

...everywhere.

I was very taken with this pastiche of an Ancient Egyptian garden. References to Akhenaten and Tutankhamun are to be found in the relief sculptures and garden furniture.

In the Garden at Torquay...

... the Golden Rod Solidago altissima has opened further and I was able to use it in the ikebana I created for the Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter meeting last Tuesday. 

The theme of the meeting was "Celebrating Imperfection", inspired by the presentation of the guest speakers Mr and Mrs Murooka. They are practitioners of the Japanese art of Kintsugi; that is, the art of repairing damaged ceramic objects with lacquer coloured with gold powder. My ikebana included the 'imperfection' caused by the cold air that damages green leaves and changes their colour to autumn tonings as they slowly die (although others of us might call it beauty). In this case ornamental grapevine and Nandina domestica leaves. 

The tall Japanese ceramic vase has a Tenmoku glaze, and so far is not damaged.

Further images from the meeting can be seen here, Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter.

Greetings from Christopher
19th March 2023 

MORE THAN TWO VASES

In the garden this week...

...the Golden Rod Solidago altissima, has finally come into full flowering. It had become a bit dry with the recent warm weather and responded well to extra watering over the last week. I was relieved by this, as we are going away next week and I had wanted to use the material while I had the opportunity.

The Ikebana above, is in its second iteration. I had initially demonstrated a basic upright style using leaves instead of branches for the benefit of my new students. When I came home I thought it would be interesting to create a vertical composition with the materials using two kenzans. The vessel is by the New Zealand ceramic artist Elena Renka.

Also in the garden, the Hydrangea has now taken on autumnal toning and the colour has deepened into a fairly rich red. The pink sepals have also hardened and I am hoping that they will dry when I bring them inside.

           (Those that I used two weeks ago have deepened 

            to a bluish grey with pink edges).

I decided to pick the six best flower heads before they are damaged by rain. I had deliberately cut the stems slightly longer than usual. However, when I brought them inside, I struggled to find a suitable vase (which does sound bizarre!). The stems were not long enough for the larger vases and the mass of six was overwhelming because of the intensity of the colour.

The solution was to be more respectful of the individual flowers. Less is more. These blooms are so richly coloured that they are seen to better advantage with, in this case, just two flower heads and a few leaves. The modern black ceramic vase turned out to be the ideal foil and it also provides the line element in this simple ikebana.

Earlier in the week the Sogetsu Branch held its AGM followed by a workshop led by Thea Sartori, a senior teacher of the Branch. The theme she set was to make an ikebana using more that two unrelated vessels. This turned out to be quite an interesting challenge.

I first chose three vases: a celadon glazed vase in a traditional Chinese form, a modern matte black vase and a blue glass bottle-shaped vase. The materials are two Coastal Sword Sedge leaves Lepidospermum gladiatum, some partially-opened Golden Rod flowers and an inflorescence of pink Cane Begonia. First of all, I carefully curved the sedge leaves which I used to link the vessels.The vase on the left is not touching but stands forward of the black vase and its sedge leaf gestures towards the blue vase. The other sedge leaf curves over and sits across the opening of the back vase.

More photos from the workshop can be seen on the Victorian Sogetsu Branch website through the link.

Greetings from Christopher

12th March 2023

STRELITZIA JUNCEA

 

A couple of weeks ago I held an outdoor class for my Geelong students. The exercise was to make large freestanding sculptural ikebana works. The class was held in Christine's garden, where the students chose from stored materials including large branches (and trunks), machined wood, light dried materials and found metal objects. We worked in pairs, with me being one of a pair.  The sun was setting just as we finished our constructions. I found it impossible to photograph the whole of any sculpture because of the background of trees. Below are two photos where I managed to capture the major elements  by using a foldout backdrop.

This is the upper part of Christine and Maree's sculpture. The main structure is from large sections of Birch with the curving line of a Palm spathe. In the centre an irregular mass was created with red tissue paper attached to metal rods that pierced and secured the wood.

Ellie and Maureen found a very weathered piece of driftwood which they used as the main stem at the base of their sculpture. It has been inverted and wedged in a block of wood and stabilised on a metal plate. The upper part of the sculpture uses fine dried materials that have been coloured red.

 

At the class last week... 

...Maree's exercise was to make a sketch of the arrangement that she planned. Step two in the exercise was to make the ikebana. She arranged a large Monstera deliciosa  leaf at an angle, behind which sits a large blue Hydrangea flowerhead. A line of fine Tortuous Willow curves over the leaf and flower.

Jo's exercise was to make an ikebana "to be viewed from above". In a large royal blue suiban she placed a small sculpture made from hashi (chopsticks) within which she made a mass using spent flowerheads of Agapanthus with the seeds removed. Some of the seeds were then arranged in the suiban. I was interested to note that she had placed some short lengths of the Agapanthus stems within the sculpture.

The exercise for the advanced students was to make an ikebana incorporating some dried wood.

Tess placed a large piece of wood across the top of a tsubo vessel. Two masses of Pink Sedum "Autumn Joy" create a fresh-looking colour contrast.

 

Maureen set a smoothly weathered piece of driftwood in a glass vase so that it appeared to float above the fresh materials, white Freesia flowers and Asparagus fern, perhaps A. setaceus.

After the outdoor workshop, Christine found this very large piece of driftwood, possibly Coastal Tea Tree Leptospermum laevigatum. She secured it in a hole in a wooden block and added a Hydrangea flowerhead as well as two small stems of Eucalyptus.

This table-top ikebana, made by Helen, is set in a rustic stone vessel with a small knot of dried wood sitting on the rim. Two vertically-placed disk-shaped leaves are Bergenia crassifolia, are off-set with the almost black lines of Black Mondo Grass Orphiopogon planiscapus.

Ellie inverted a dried branch with a knob of its root sitting on the rim of a box-shaped glass vase. Inside the vase she set a stem of Banksia with a flower inflorescence about to open. The fine line of the Banksia stem partially echos the thicker dried branch.

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In our garden the Strelitzia juncea had finished flowering and was looking rather untidy, as the finished flowers needed to be removed. I am always fascinated that the intense pink at the top of the stems takes a long time to fade.

To my surprise I noticed that a couple of them had started to develop seeds. Which, perhaps foolishly, I did not save. 

There were over twenty flowers this year. Here are a dozen that I had cut and removed the dried petals from the "beak" of the flower. Even without the brilliant orange and deep blue of the petals there is still some remarkable beauty and character in these pruned stems. I was happy to use them in my ikebana this week.

 

The starting point for the ikebana was a late season Agapanthus flower, which suddenly appeared in my neighbour's garden. Cut with permission, I thought its colour would go well with this vase by Pippin Drysdale. Then I realised that the pink of the Strelitzia flower stems would also complement the vase. The final result is a "line and mass" ikebana with the lines creating irregular almost triangular spaces. 

The mass is not correct in a technical sense because I have only used one flower. Therefore I have not created the mass, it being made by nature.

Greetings from Christopher

5th March 2023