Hello all,

The wall arrangement, above, is on a piece of slate, into which I cut a hole and placed a flat, plastic bottle behind it to hold water and the stems of the materials. It took a bit of engineering with thick wire to make it all come together. The materials are half a monstera deliciosa leaf, cumquats and kamo hon ami camellia.

The theme for the regular Wednesday class was 'Complementing an Art Piece'. Below is my arrangement.

I bought the art piece, which is made from reconstituted stone, when I became a mother for the first time. The sentiment depicted by the piece moved me deeply and I had to have it. The materials I used are one large and one smaller monstera deliciosa leave and two pomegranates.

Lucy's art piece is a stylized, metal, tribal mask. She used two gymea leaves, half a monstera deliciosa leaf and a single chrysanthemum in a ceramic container.

Lei chose one of Henri Matisse's papier decoupe pieces, which he created during the final years of his life. Lei used monstera deliciosa leaves, partially stripped and cut out more holes to mirror the work. The flowers were pink snapdragons. The container was a ceramic trough.

Vicky's plate is by Erte, a Russian-French artist and designer. It depicts the Queen of Sheba. Vicky used a metal vase on top of which she placed a scrunched up, thick, black wire. She then added chrysanthemums and a single camelia. She placed the vase on a gold place mat.

Dianne's class theme was 'In a Suiban Without a Kenzan'. She arrived with several, large pieces of nandina domestica. It took some effort to create this arrangement, which is challenging at the best of times, let alone when there are heavy branches to deal with. She managed, however, it with a little bit of help and started to remove some of the leaves but ran out of time. She promised to fine tune it at home. The flowers are chrysanthemums.

The May Sogetsu workshop was led by Akemi Suzuki, who chose as the subject 'Creating Windows'. She demonstrated three arrangements, one of which is in the photograph, below with Akemi looking through the 'window' that she created. She used polygala branches and dietes leaves in a quirky, ceramic container.

For my arrangement I used the red stemmed, Siberian dogwood to create an oval 'window' that protruded forward. The roses that can be seen through the window are called 'Lolita'.

Side view showing the forward 
movement

Lucy made triangular windows using corky elm which she sprayed with two different coloured sprays to create a burnt look. She used nerines for the floral focus. 

For this week's camellia arrangement I have used the first to open of the red flowering camellia (name unknown). So far I've been using the white, kamo hon ami camellia because it starts flowering in April and finishes in September. It does not produce masses of flowers but it does have a long flowering period.

Bye for now,

Emily