Shoso Shimbo: October 2014

Thursday, 23 October 2014

Japanese Aesthetics Course at RMIT University

Shoso's Japanese aesthetics course has started at RMIT university. Our focus has been Ikebana for the first 3 weeks. We will be making abstruct sculptures from next week.
http://www.shortcourses.rmit.edu.au/course_page.php?course=S320193
http://bit.ly/1uIw3Gy

http://www.shoso.com.au
https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

Friday, 17 October 2014

Table Arrangements for a Dinner Party at a Gallery

I made table arrangements for a dinner party at the Lesley Kehoe Galleries, Melbourne. The internationally renowned gallery specialises in contemporary Japanese arts.

http://www.shoso.com.au
https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

Thursday, 16 October 2014

Daily Meditation

I have been showing a series of my my ikebana works, Daily Meditation on our Facebook pages, https://www.facebook.com/IkebanaGallery and https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia.

From time to time the visitors to the pages ask similar questions, what do you mean by daily meditation?, or what do you mean by 'using left over materials'?

I make ikebana works almost every day. Making them is a daily ritual as well as meditation for me. I hope viewing them would be meditation for the viewers as well. So I named the series Daily Meditation.

As anyone working with flowers knows, there are always some left over flowers after lessons or after making commercial works. That's inevitable. Sadly we usually have to throw them away. However, I often save them from our rubbish bin and make another ikebana work.

As discarded followers, they are always limited in quantity, quality and selection. With such limitation I can still make something interesting and I would like to share it on our Facebook pages.

http://www.shoso.com.au
https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

Monday, 6 October 2014

Ikebana for Home Party

This is another example of our Home Party Package A: 1 medium arrangement with a give away container + 2 small table arrangements with a plastic container each.

Visit our Display & Delivery page for the details.

http://www.shoso.com.au
https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

Thursday, 2 October 2014

Ikebana Today 28

We have been trying to find out what Ikebana is. Historically ikebana was a style of Ikebana (Ikebana as a general term for Japanese flower arrangement). It was contradiction to Takehana, the main stream of Ikebana but it seems to have something essential about Ikebana. Then, what is the essence of Ikebana?

Let’s look at the word “ikebana” more carefully. The word consists of ike and bana. Bana means flowers. What is ike(ru)? The original form of ikeru is a verb, iku, which has three basic meanings: 1. to make alive, 2. to do ikebana, 3. to bury (plants), etc. The first one is the oldest and closest to the original meaning of the word.

So ikebana originally means to make flowers alive. We could imagine someone was arranging flowers around 15th century in a new fashion thinking “I am not making flower upright like Tatehana. I am making flowers alive. Let’s call what I am creating ikebana”. We now have to think what does it mean to make flowers alive.

This month I’d like to show you my Christmas installation, Magical Tunnel commissioned by the city of Ballarat in 2013. It is covered with solar lights and people can walk through the illumination at night. My task was to recycle the Christmas decorations and wastes from the previous years. To recycle them I had to break them down into smaller units and rearrange them into a new form. That process was very similar to Ikebana, breaking down natural materials and rearrange them in a harmonious order. This work was chosen as the most popular Christmas art work by the people of the city.