Spring Gardens

After a long period of gray and rainy weather in Portland the sun eventually came through. What a stroke of luck for us visitors! The spring gardens performed at their very best.

Shuho Ikebana

Both Crystal Springs Rhodoendron garden and Lan Su Chinese garden were fantastic. My absolute favorite, however, is Portland Japanese garden. This garden covers a big area on a hill and is composed of five distinct garden styles. It has a flat garden, a strolling pond garden, a tea garden, a natural garden and a sand and stone garden. Portland Japanese garden is often said to be the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan.

The Garden often hosts ikebana exhibitions by the schools represented in the Portland chapter of Ikebana International. Earlier this month the Garden presented a special Presentation of ikebana by Shuho, the master of Ikebana at Ginkakuji (Jisho-ji) Temple. She is the founder of Ginkaku-ji’s  (The Silver Temple in Kyoto) Center for Ikebana Studies. She is also in charge of organizing international cultural exchange through the Ginkaku Jisho-ji Temple Kenshu Dojo Study Center. Unfortunately we weren't able to see her presentation.

These pictures are from Portland Japanese Garden and the tea house located in the tea garden.

Tweet

Visiting Portland

Camellia.
Nageire, naturalistic freestyle.

While in Portland I was able to take an ikebana class with a very experienced Sogetsu teacher. Keiko Kodachi has been teaching ikebana in Portland since 1962 and was the founder of the Portland Sogetsu Branch. She holds the teaching rank of Riji, which is the highest in the Sogetsu school.

The class was in her ikebana studio where I met an inspired group of students. Everyone was very welcoming and it was a great experience. Today's task was working with Camellia branches. Since we do not have Camellias in Norway I decided to make an Ishu-ike (one material only) arrangement and work with bending techniques to explore the possibilities of the branches.

Tweet

A Beloved Japanese Garden

During our stay in Los Angeles we also made a trip to The Huntington botanical gardens in Pasadena. This institution founded by Henry E. Huntington opened to the public already in 1928. More than 14,000 different varieties of plants can be found in the different garden areas. The Japanese garden is one of the most beloved. We learned that this garden was a gift from Henry to his wife Arabella, to make it more attractive to stay in this (at that time) hopelessly unexciting place on earth.

The Japanese house in the garden is considered one of the best examples of early twentieth-century Japanese architecture in the United States. Built in Japan, the house has paneled doors to the outside that can be left open or closed to allow inhabitants to enjoy the gardens around them. I was especially happy to find fresh ikebana arrangements in the rooms with tokonoma.

Tweet

Back in LA

I always try to find something ikebana related to do when I'm out traveling. There is so much to learn from meeting others and ikebana people are a largely welcoming species. This time in LA I hooked up with Ravi GuneWardena a Sogetsu practitioner and architect with whom I've been communicating by e-mail a year ago. Ravi very gracefully offered to take us to see some interesting examples of midcentury modern Californian houses. When the sun went down we ended up at a nice restaurant in LA's Little Tokyo district, discussing Sogetsu iemoto Akane Teshigahara's visit to LA at the North American Sogetsu Seminar 2013.

Ravi and Frank Escher of Escher GuneWardena Architecture were hired to design the exhibition Living Flowers Ikebana and Contemporary Art at Japanese American National Museum 2008. With simple materials, fabric and paper, they adapted Japanese architectural elements such as shoji screens and tokonoma as a framework for the exhibition, showing works of contemporary artists alongside ikebana created by masters of the Ikenobo, Ohara, and Sogetsu schools of ikebana.

Photo: Japanese American National Museum

They also curated the exhibition Flowers for Pauline at MAK center/Schindler House in 2012.

This video was produced by JANM for the 2008 exhibition, featuring interviews with teachers from the three participating schools:

Tweet

One Cherry Blossom Opens

Freestyle, Sakura season.
Dried branches with leaves, Ranunculus, pine.

The Sakura (cherry blossom season) has reached it's peak in Kyoto. At least according to the online Cherry Blossom Forecast.

Although it's fare to early here in Norway for Cherry blossoms, this weeks lesson at ikebana class was making arrangements inspired by the Sakura season. The students were doing variation no. 3 (fan style) and tried out making a naturalistic freestyle arrangement after that. The result was very satisfying and we aeed on that the progress in the group was obvious.

I made this upright freestyle arrangement as an example, using a saying as inspiration: "One cherry blossom opens - and everywhere is spring." My ikebana teacher once gave me a deeper interpretation of this saying interpreted as "Open the blossom of enlightenment in your heart and eternal peace dwells in you".

Students work - Sakura inspired fan style arrangements.

Tweet

Ikebana at The Art League

The Art League in Washington DC is one of many art museums around the world to regulary host popular ikebana exhibitions. The ikebana arrangements are created in dialogue with art works from the collections and stays up for a few days only.

Take a look at this video if you want a glimpse of the process of finding inspiration, choosing materials and creating an ikebana arrangement.

The video is re-blogged from ikebana artist Keith Stanley. Visit his blog to read more about the exhibition and see his ikebana arrangement.

Tweet

Peaceful Harbor

Boat arrangement.
Sansevieria trifasciata and Calla Lilly.

The boat arrangement is a very old type of Shôka arrangement. It's usually hanging, either from the ceiling or wall-mounted, symbolizing a ship going out on the sea or coming back again. The Oki-fune or Tomari-bune arrangement depicts a ship at harbor. This style can also be placed at a table and should be a very peaceful arrangement - a boat at total rest.

The Sogetsu school doesn't teach the old classic ikebana styles, but uses them for inspiration. With a reference to old symbolic codes this Shôka-inspired arrangement says: Well done, you've made it through the storm. Now is the time for resting and regaining peace.

Tweet

Ikebana in Japan's Postwar Recovery

Today, as I was going through some old papers, I found a sheet with notes from a lecture with Dr. Nancy Stalker, from her visit in Oslo last year. Dr. Stalker is a professor of Japanese history and culture at the University of Texas at Austin. One of her present research topics is the role of ikebana in constructing national and international Japanese identity in the twentieth century, especially focusing on its rapid expansion in postwar Japan from the 1950s-70s.

DR. Stalker states that Ikebana played an important role in the postwar recovery of Japan. The new Japan was branded as a nation balancing industrial "hard power" with artistic "soft power". In this marketing as a nation of culture, ikebana became a pillar of cultural nationalism. A state agency Ikebana Geijutsu kyôkai (Japan Ikebana Association), was established to coordinate and encourage the development of the schools. About 110 schools joined the agency, that came to work almost like a cartel dominated by the three largest schools, Ikenobo, Ohara and the new and rapidly growing Sogetsu school.

The Sogetsu Kaikan building 1958, designed by Tange Kenzo.

Another interesting point is how the iemoto system (head master hierarki of a school of traditional Japanese art) was challenged by this development. The iemotos that adopted the new organizational strategies, including new nationalism and gender ideas, saw their schools growing as they joined forces with the new cultural mega industry. Teaching ikebana became a new career opportunity especially for women, and it was said that if you had 40 students you could afford the life style of a white collar. In the 1960s there were 10 million ikebana practitioners. The number of schools grew to over 3000 in Japan, and the top three schools only had over 1 million students. In the Edo period (until late 1800s) few schools had more than 1000 students, with the exception of Ikenobo that possibly had up to 10.000. The iemoto hierarki was developed in the late 16th to early 17th century. Before that the teachers were independent.

The iemoto system was challenged also by the growth of ikebana outside of Japan. In the 1960s approximately 10.000 foreign women held ikebana teachers exams from different schools and were teaching around the world. The organisation Ikebana international was founded 1956 by Ellen Gordon Allen. Ikebana international organizes people interested in ikebana from different schools and encourages exchange between the traditions, a totally unthinkable idea within the iemoto system. Traditionally you work towards the perfection of your skills within your own school, following the rules set up by the iemoto. With a forceful personality and many colorful friends, Ellen Gordon Allen managed to develop a strong organisation and her ideas forced the schools to transform the traditions towards more openness. The iemotos realized that they could profit from adjusting to  a more international approach.

Tweet

Naoko Tosa: Sound of IKEBANA - Four Seasons

Earlier this year, internationally-renowned media artist Naoko Tosa transformed Singapore's city skyline with an exterior projection on the ArtScience Museum façade.

Shot at 2,000 frames per second using high-speed photography, Sound of IKEBANA is a series of videos that showcases vibrant images using various liquids (such as paints and oils) created from sound vibrations.

See more about the Sound of IKEBANA project on the artists website and on this screen format video of Sound of IKEBANA - Spring. This video also has an informative text about the work in the "about" section. 

Tweet

Daniel Rybakken - Single Flower Vase

Norwegian designer Daniel Rybakken is probably most renown for his experimenting with daylight and working to create the illusion of daylight. Don't miss out on his current show The new light at DogA in Oslo if you're around.

Amongst his other conceptual experiments is this Single Flower Vase, shown in Milan 2012. By simplifying the vase from something esthetic on its own, down to a simple plate, the focus is shifted over to the flower.

From an ikebana perspective it resembles a simplified single material arrangement. When there is nothing to distract, you realize that all of the plant has form and character of its own.

Tweet