11th July, 2022

 

Hello all,

Last Saturday Vernisher Wooh came down from Brisbane to run workshops for our Sogetsu group. Vernisher is the 7th recipient of the Norman and Mary Sparnon Endowment scholarship, which provided for her to spend three months in Tokyo in 2019, studying at Headquarters.

Vernisher started the day by sharing with us photographs and experiences of her stay in Japan, which I found particularly interesting as it reminded me of my own experiences there.

We, then, moved to our first theme, which was 'Using Only One Kind of Material'. I chose one of my favourite winter materials - Prunus Mume, Japanese flowering apricot. I chose large branches with tight buds and a couple of smaller ones with fully opened blossoms, which I placed towards the centre of the structure. The arrangement was 'In a Suiban Without a Kenzan'.

The second theme was 'A Winter Arrangement'. For my arrangement, at the top of this post, I used my other, two favourite materials - Garrya Elliptica and Kamo Hon Ami camellia. The ceramic container is one I made decades ago and is, also, a favourite. 

For class last Wednesday I provided the advanced students with branches of my Prunus Mume as an opportunity to workshop this material, which they may not have used before.

Vicky used a number of small white containers into which she placed a number of different sized branches and refrained from adding any other material. A good example of 'Using Only One Kind of Material'.

Bredenia wanted to revise the lesson 'In a Suiban Without a Kenzan'. Along with the blossom branches, she used red dogwood (Cornus Siberian Alba), and a single arum lily.

Jenny used her branches vertically and added Oriental lilies in a recently acquired, ceramic vase.

Nicole, also, used a nageire container with her blossom branches and added cymbidium orchids, one stem fully opened and two still in bud.

Lucy used a bamboo container, in which she placed two stems of the blossoms and a draping branch of cootamundra wattle in tight bud.

For her Special Occasions theme, Shaneen chose to celebrate Australia Day. She wrapped paper bark from Melaleuca quinquenervia around a ceramic vase and used in her arrangement Purple Hop Bush, Callistemon citrinus, Wattle, Banksia burdetti, Banksia integrifolia and heather-calluna vulgaris. I feel I have to explain that the arrangement was very pleasing to all of us in the class but, with the loss of depth, the photograph does not do it justice. 

Wendy' curriculum theme was 'Repeating Similar Shapes'. She created shapes using aspidistra leaves in different sizes and added a camellia stem with two flowers in a small, ceramic suiban.

  

Mary's theme was 'Curved and Straight Lines'. She used Siberian dogwood (Cornus Siberica Alba) for the curved lines and bamboo for the straight. For the flowers she used mauve coloured stock. 

Bye for now,

Emily