Last weekend my guests and I visited the home of one of my students in the countryside northeast of Melbourne. It proved an opportunity for an outdoor Sogetsu sculptural installation workshop, for my Canadian visitors as well as my host.
Out door work is always a challenge, most particularly because botanical materials are likely to get lost when competing with features in the landscape. Therefore, one strategy to overcome this is to try to integrate the 'sculpture' with some elements of the environment.
Leonora, who worked with Nici, chose to site their work against this large elm tree and to incorporate an old iron, garden-chair.
They added lines of fallen eucalyptus branches and yellow roses.
Notice how the branch lines continue up into the branches of the tree. Unfortunately the photo doesn't do the sculpture justice as the rusty metal of the chair blends into the texture of the elm's bark.
Eleanor and Marcia chose to site their work against these benches made from railway sleepers, looking across a wide valley. Marcia was keen to use a large old gate. It was fixed to the bench with some brackets and stood on one corner. Two large branches were threaded through the wire mesh to provide additional stability.
Eleanor and Marcia at work adding large pale grey-green artichoke leaves.
The final result had a surprising sense of playful movement.
Greetings from Christopher
25th October 2015
Thanks for posting this interesting and fun looking Ikebana exercise and I guess you could say exercise in more than one way.
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