Neuigkeiten aus meiner Ikebana Welt. An welchen Blumen und Materialien ich gerade Freude habe, womit ich und meine Schüler gerade arbeite, was mich beschäftigt und was ich tolles für meinen Ikebana Unterricht entdecke.
Immer frisch und immer mit Herz.
This past weekend we held our annuale Sogetsu Ikebana Exhibition in the beautitul Brisbane Botanic Garden. The theme was “Space”, and more then 40 stunning arrangements were on display. Our members interpreted the theme with great creativity, each bringing their own vision and style to life.
At the crack of dawn on Thursday morning, I had the chance to visit the Brisbane flower market and selectet some wonderful materials for my students. We worked with very abstract shapes of quince, which was quite a challenge, but the results turned out beautifully and were truly worth the effort.
This week, I had the pleasure of leading a workshop with the ladies of the Floral Art Society in Coloundra. We worked with Puzzle-Sticks, Flexigrass and wintery flowers. The ladies approached the unfamiliar art of Ikebana with enthusiasm and openness. The results were interesting, abstract and each arrangement had its own unique expression.
Last Friday, we held our Winter-Special-Seminar with plants and flowers only availibale at this time of the year here on the Sunshine Coast. We used wattletrees, some looks a bit like Mimosas, as well as Banksias in all stages - from babies to mature ones and to grandmas - showcasing their full beauty and characters, tulips, poppies and poinsettias where also used.
In part two of the event, I like to show you disigns of: Bent but not Broken, Vision of Tranquility and Sunset-Serenade. I crated an arrangement of Tranquility, using Pear-branches and Poppies, which the Australian judge didn´t particulary appreciate, as the other participants presented more elaborate designs. Still I´m happy and grateful to be part of this wonderful event.
This is my first winter here on the Sunshine Coast, and I´m very happy to be part of the Nambour Garden Show, where I have the opportunity to exhibit with the Nambour Floral Art Group. I´m of course the only one presenting Ikebana - all the other participants are florist - but the welcomed me warmly, which brings me a lot of joy. We´re working with sechs differnt themes, today I like to introduce: Table for two, Wintery Moon and Creatures from the Deep. All of them are very intersting, very artistic and far away from our Ikebana, but a lot of fun.
I just came across a picture of the very first Ikebana my wonderful friend Christiane created while she was visiting me. It instantly brought back memories of the three beautiful weeks we spend together. I´d love to share some of our experiences and the amazing animals we were lucky enough to discover.
We worked with the hidden symbolic of flowers this week and arranged with many different flowers, branches and leaves. One Arrangment is made with Typha for strengs and natural clarity and Oncidium which repräsents joy and elegance. The second Arrangment with Canna, Wattle-Tree and Poppies tells a story of tropical strenght, sense of togetherness and transience of the moment. In the third one with thistle, Scarbioasa and Calla you can find defense, sorrow and elegance.
This week we all focused on the horizontal lesson from Book 3, in person and online. A wide variety of materials were used, including banana-leaves combined with haccia -branches, chrysanthemums, snapdragons with Poppy pods and Peonies. Coral trees and ferns also found their way into our arrangements.
I brought back beautiful and very fine washi-paper from Japan for both my students and the lovely Brisbane ladies. Everyone brought their own dry plant-material and a variety of flowers. What followed was countless ideas and unique Arrangements, reflecting the personal connection between nature, paper and hand.
We spend a successful person to person morning and an online class evening exploring the beauty and diversity of leaves, following the aesthetic principle of Sofu Teshigahara where leaves take center stage and flowers play a secondary role. I wide variety of leaves were used to create striking compositions, including palm- strelitia-, aspidistra- and birds nest leaves.
We st.arted our summer online-Ikebana-course under the waxing moon, hanging to the left side. Great results were achieved, and my online students greatly enjoyed this lesson.
We kicked off our autumn course with oversized leaves, setting a stage for beautiful arrangements. Most of my students brought stunning bird-of-paradise flowers, which we combined with unusual shaped Helekonia- bird-of-paradiese - ore birds-nest-ferns leaves. Everyone was full of enthusiasm and delighted that the new course had finally begun.
Today we will show you some more impressions from our trip to Tokyo, not only from the Headquarter but a little bit more of this fantastic big energetic City
We are back from our trip to Japan with wonderful memories, and full of inspiration. We are still recovering and need a bit more time until we get back to our routine. Tokyo and the Sogetsu-Haedquarter where fantastic. The Cherry-blossems just started to bloom when we arrived and came to an end when we left. Today we show you just a few pictures from our lessons at Sogetsu-School.
We are in Japan to study, get inspiration from the Headquarter of the Sogetsu-School and to do a bit of the OHENRO (the great pilgrimage at Shikoku) . We are back in middle of April full of inspiration. No regular sunday-update antil then.
After our return from Japan we would like to share a brief overview of our Shikoku Pilgramage Tour. Along the way, we visited twenty beautiful temples ans soaked in the unique atmosphere of this spiritual journey. Here´s a small selection of the temples we had the chance to explore and some impressions from the road.
The topic of the last two weeks were Sailing Boats, sail out of the harbour with very positiv and fresh aproach and come back on week later very proud and with wonderful valuable things the have purchased somewhere in the world.
Sofo Teshigahara, the founder of our Sogetsu-School and the spanisch painter Joan Miró met in Tokyo and in Paris in the 1950s. There friendship was about respect and recognition of each other´s innovative approaches. In our online-class we looked at a few picture from Miró and tried to adopt the colors and the atmosphere with conventional and unconventional materials. We would like to show you the selected Miró Pictures, but we are not allowed to do so!
We finished our summer course with straight and curved lines and with the first variation of upright Moribana. My new students are very good in finding and working with interesting materials, as you can see for yourself. I am very proud of my more advanst students, becouse they become more courageius in the choise of materials.
We worked with great joy on straight lines. The hardest part was to choose the right material. Then we found out, that the ugly mother in-law-tongue is very forgiving. We pinched holes in, put some sticks through and mad expressive Arrangements.
Photos Eyes Wide Open Images
