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| Photograph by Lei Wang |
Hello all,
Well, our exhibition is in full swing and the gallery is looking quite impressive with the great variety of Sogetsu arrangements. We had the official opening yesterday and this, being the first of a four week long exhibition, will be changed on 6th November. There will be subsequent changes each week thereafter.
In the first week many of us had the privilege of using ceramic containers, which are part of the Council's collection. In the arrangement, above, I used a container by the artist, Brian KEYTE - Baluster Vase Copper Red, Wheel thrown, stoneware clay. It measures 40cm in height.
I wanted to make a larger arrangement than the container would allow, so I built a bamboo structure around part of the plinth and the container. I had the measurements of the plinths that are owned by the gallery from previous exhibitions of mine and my students' work in 2022 and May 2024. This meant that I could prepare the structure to fit snuggly around the plinth.
I'd been watching the flowers on my strelitzia nicolai for weeks, hoping they would open in time. And they did. To reach them, I enlisted Lucy's help to bring out a table, on which I stood and, using the extendable cutter with a saw attachment, I was able to cut them down. The only other material I used was nandina domestica with its inflorescence in bud.
For my second arrangement I made a sculptural piece as per our lesson in Book 5 'Composition Using Unconventional Materials'. I had the bent wood in my storeroom for many years and was happy to finally put it to use. It's quite self explanatory but I should point out that the piece has movement. The top part can pivot over the vertical dowel.
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| This photograph of me by Lei gives a sense of proportion |
I will feature more photographs in due course but, you would enjoy the exhibition much more if you were to visit it.
Venue:
Whitehorse Artspace
Box Hill Town Hall 1022 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill
Tuesday to Friday 10am - 4pm Saturday 12pm - 4pm
And now to ikebana at home. My strelitzia reginae has been quite prolific, with some of them reaching two metres in height. I was loathe to cut such lovely, long stems so I figured a way to use them using this rather large container full of holes. The difficulty was in bending the strong stems without snapping them.
In the next arrangement, the flowers have so much character that no other material or manipulation was needed. I merely placed them in my self-made container.
Lei's class arrangement was a freestyle. She used a container which is split in half and placed two fatsia leaves and a cymbidium orchid on one side. She, then, brought two horsetail reeds (equisetum hyemale) delineating the left from the right side of the container.
In her freestyle arrangement, Mary used Japanese maple, Altissimo roses and inflorescence from nandina domestica in a ceramic container.
Bye for now,
Emily
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