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