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Freestyle Arrangement

2020-08-08T22:50:00+00:00

My ikebana teacher surprised me with some flowers. I made this simple freestyle arrangement with them. I hope you enjoy!

Soho Sakai

2020-08-05T06:10:00+00:00

Recently the deYoung had their annual Bouquets to Art exhibition. The gist is that floral artists in the Bay Area (and I think abroad as well?) are encouraged to pick a piece from the deYoung’s permanent collection that speaks to them. Then, they make a floral arrangement that is inspired by the piece. The floral arrangement and the artwork sit next to each other for a week. It’s the deYoung’s blockbuster event, drawing crazy crowds every year.

Unsurprisingly, their programming moved online this year, which allowed me to peruse some names and images I wouldn’t have come across in an in-person exhibition. Here, I discovered Soho Sakai!

Soho Sakai has been teaching ikebana in the bay area since 1997. She runs the bay area chapter of Sogetsu Ikebana, and teaches my own ikebana teacher!

Her work is incredible. I thought I’d share a small set of images I found online. Perhaps I’ll find more ikebana artists and share their work through this blog, while my own studies are on hiatus?

Image credits: One Two Three

Vertical & Horizontal Arrangements (v2)

2020-07-19T07:02:00+00:00

Yesterday I discovered a new flower shop in my neighborhood. I mainly get my flowers from the SF Flower Mart in SOMA, but I believe it’s closed until further notice. Stumbling across this tiny flower shop in my neighborhood made my day!

Unlike at the Flower Mart, I was able to purchase individual stems (rather than in bulk), cutting down the cost of materials significantly. The downside is that there isn’t much variety, but it’s way more convenient than getting in the car and driving down to SOMA.

I was tempted to make another Moribana arrangement… but I was already kind of disappointed in myself for not trying to venture out of my comfort zone at all. I decided to make one vertically focused arrangement, and one horizontally focused one – a throwback to my last lessons in formal ikebana class.

The vertical arrangement is pretty simple. I haven’t used this vase in a while, so I figured I should dust it off and put it to use. This arrangement feels like a combination of two or three other arrangements I’ve made in the past. It was fun, but didn’t feel super exciting to me.

When I make a freestyle arrangement, I try to introduce one new element each time. Most of the time, it means working with a new type of plant… however, I’ve already worked with dahlias, thistles and eucalyptus, so I had to figure out a new way to introduce novelty. I decided to make a cross-bar fixture, or jumanji-dome, inside of the white vase used in the horizontal arrangement. The vase is pretty irregularly shaped, so creating a cross-bar fixture inside of it was slightly difficult.

I also decided to employ a technique my ikebana teacher taught me. The eucalyptus portion of the arrangement is comprised of 3 eucalyptus branches that I piled on top of each other, to give the effect of pretty even leaves/foliage throughout the length of the branches. The intent is to create the illusion of one, extra leafy branch.

Creating these arrangements was pretty fun, and slightly more challenging than a traditional Moribana arrangement. I am super excited to discover this new flower shop in my neighborhood. I’ll hopefully be posting more consistently in the future, since it’s now so easy to get materials! …Ikebana is one of the most ideal activities for a quarantine world.

Robert Mapplethorpe’s Flowers

2020-07-18T06:19:00+00:00

Since San Francisco’s shelter in place ordinance started in March, I’ve been unable to take ikebana classes. I’ve sporadically bought some flowers to make ikebana, but I’ve mostly been sticking to simple Moribana arrangements. They’re low effort, but still manage to liven up my dining room (and my mood). I haven’t posted them on this blog, because they’re… pretty basic. It’s more for me, rather than developing a new skill in ikebana or continuing the Sogetsu curriculum.

This overall lack of motivation/willpower/energy/whatever, has crept into many aspects of life outside of ikebana. I have a feeling I am not alone in this – the world is pretty bleak right now. Sometimes it feels like there’s so little to look forward to, being cooped up at home all day out of fear of making yourself or someone else extremely sick.

In response to these feelings, I’ve been trying to create new escapes for myself. The latest one has been buying more art books. Before coronavirus hit, I made it a priority to see art shows in San Francisco, LA, New York, etc. I’m no longer able to enjoy art in person, so being surrounded by art in my home is a nice reprieve (and demands less of me than reading a novel or non-fiction book).

Recently, I bought three of Robert Mapplethorpe’s flower compilation books. Maybe partially because of nostalgia? I saw a show dedicated to him at the Guggenheim in New York in January (which feels like an eternity ago).

Implicit Tensions:Mapplethorpe Now displayed his work for the first half of the year, and the latter half showed works by other contemporary artists. Ironically, I missed Mapplethorpe’s work being on display, and caught the group show. However, this piqued my interest in him and his work. I didn’t realize until recently that he shot tons of still lifes.

His flower photography is really beautiful, and I thought I’d share some with you.

Images are taken from Pistils (1996), Mapplethorpe Flora: The Complete Flowers (2016), and Flowers (1990), and shot on my phone (so I apologize for the poor image quality).

Plants and Dreams

2020-04-18T07:16:00+00:00

With the world shut down due to the Coronavirus epidemic, I’ve had no opportunities to create ikebana. This makes me sad for a number of reasons… Selfishly, I miss this regular creative outlet I had. Classes with my teacher are understandably postponed until further notice. More concerning though, I believe the flower mart in San Francisco is closed and unlikely to reopen in the future. If you’re able to, please consider donating so they can continue paying their staff.

Sadly, the flower mart was already in a tenuous position. Before this closure, large real estate developers wanted to shut it down, or at best, relocate it to Bay View. Compared to the current location right off of 280, this location is more inconvenient for people to visit. I can’t help but wonder if it’s a way to slowly strangle the flower mart out of business.

Regardless, this is gravely concerning for the future of the only flower mart on the west coast. I am worried about innumerable small businesses in San Francisco… It was already difficult to run a business or be a service worker in San Francisco before the Coronavirus pandemic. Many people and businesses will not make it through this disaster unless there is rent relief and government intervention. This is an incredibly hard time for many people, and I hope you are healthy and secure in these unpredictable and scary times.

Since I am unable to make new arrangements for the time being, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look for content outside of arrangements to share. I have several ikebana books, and I hope to flip through them while I’m stuck at home. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share a piece I made with my friend Webb Allen for the 2019 Wrong Biennale.

The Wrong Biennale is a decentralized, and pretty accessible biennale focusing on internet based works. In my spare time I like to create digital art (but really it’s becoming more and more sporadic, as I get more serious about ikebana and other interests).

Webb and I created a zine focused on the relationship between plants and dreams. Since this is an ikebana blog, it feels tangentially related, ha.

You can view the piece here.

I was interested in exploring what it meant to create a digital zine. I’m really captivated by the idea of scrolling as a form of storytelling, or adding a temporal element to a webpage experience. I’d like to create more digital zines in the future, ranging from simple ones like this, to complex, interactive stories.

Two Vase Composition

2020-03-13T05:40:00+00:00

Today I made an arrangement that required using two vases. I picked up this nice pair at the San Francisco Flower Mart. I like the organic structure and lifelike quality to the slump!

I decided to use the smaller vase more minimally. This feels like the first arrangement I’ve made where I try to make the flowers more expressive and maybe a bit of a departure from their natural state. For example, I used a soegi-dome fixture in the smaller vase, and attached a small stem to make it look like the long branch that connects the two vases is floating on top of the smaller vase (even though its jammed in there!).

My textbook reads:

Try to use two or more containers to make an arrangement.

The containers can be chosen and coordinated as wished. Various combinations are possible such as using containers of the same shape, different materials or different colors, etc. You also need to arrange the placement of the containers such as putting them side by side or one in front of the other. At the same time, choose the materials and think out the overall composition with these containers. Try to pursue some unique extension of the space or the originality of the overall appearance depending on the combination of two or more containers.

Ikebana Tips for Software Design

2020-02-29T21:39:00+00:00

Based on The 50 Principles of Sogetsu by Sofu Teshigahara

Background

My manager at my job encouraged me to sign up for a quarterly lightning talk series at work. The presentation format is pretty casual – just five minutes to discuss whatever you’d like.

I have to admit, the process for developing a topic was pretty difficult! Originally, I wanted to dissect “The Cloud” as a metaphor for the web, and propose new metaphors we could use (inspired by Laurel Schwulst’s My Website is a Shifting House Next to a River of Knowledge) to think about personal websites. Laurel’s essay changed how I think about websites, and in some way is probably indirectly responsible for this blog. I worked on this idea for the talk for probably 20 hours and felt extremely frustrated by the lack of progress.

Two days before the talk, someone asked me why I didn’t just talk about ikebana. That was the first idea I had weeks ago, but it just seemed really cliche. For some reason, hearing it a second time around from another person helped me reframe the idea. Maybe I just needed to spin my wheels for a while?

I immediately thought of Sofu Teshigahara’s The 50 Principles of Sogetsu (which is why I posted them on this blog earlier in the week), and how they were highly relatable to any creative practice. I work at a software company making tools for designers, so it seemed natural to liken the software we build to another creative discipline.

The Talk

You can download the original slides here.

I started studying ikebana at the end of 2017. When I first started, I didn’t realize there were different schools of thought (which seems really naive in hindsight). Unknowingly, I started taking classes in the Sogetsu school of Ikebana, started by Sofu Teshigahara in 1927. Sofu Teshigahara came from an ikebana family, so he was well-versed in the traditional school of thought around ikebana. Unusually, he also had prolific calligraphy and sculpture practices. His artistic breadth influenced his outlook on ikebana, and led to the creation of the Sogetsu school.

In short, Sogetsu is a more avant garde style of ikebana. Sofu Teshigahara had two kind of radical ideas about the role of ikebana in society:

Ikebana can be made by anyone, anywhere, with any kind of materials.
Ikebana is just like any other type of art form (tying back to his own artistic practice).

So, what do you do if you’re a loner with a new radical idea? You write a manifesto.

Sofu Teshigahara wrote The 50 Principles of Sogetsu to lay out the philosophy, as well as practical tips for arranging flowers (I was unable to find the year this was published, but I assume around 1927, when Sogetsu became a thing).

I found that these principles apply to several different creative disciplines, much in the spirit of his own views on ikebana.

I picked the most relevant ones for my workplace, making slight adjustments for my startup audience!

Beautiful flowers UI does not always make beautiful ikebana products.

Individual UI elements may be attractive, visually consistent and well considered… but that’s not enough to create a compelling or successful product. Thinking of software as a bunch of individual components coming together compromises the holistic product vision.

Do not be over-concerned about the result at the beginning of your studies.

Sofu did a good job with this one! No changes here.

The Spirit of ikebana software applies to all periods while the style of works may change over time.

Software is a much newer medium than ikebana, but sometimes it’s shocking to see how little things have changed since the invention of the GUI. We still use the same desktop metaphors for our computers, and smart phones are largely unchanged since the first iPhone launched in 2007.

Home is Appstores are not the only setting for ikebana software. Consider places more personal as well as public.

Sogetsu ikebana encourages all kinds of people to practice ikebana in all kinds of places.

In May, I attended a workshop by the current head of Sogetsu, Akane Teshigahara (the fourth head of Sogetsu, since 2001). She encouraged us to go make ikebana in car dealerships!

Ikebana is usually framed as a very domestic practice. Bringing it out to the public (or maybe even in more personal spaces, like a bedroom) expands the idea of what ikebana could be.

Similarly, software products are usually distributed through an app store, in hopes of gaining the largest number of users possible. There are alternative distribution methods for software, like web based apps. These are getting more and more popular (think Facebook, Figma, Notion, etc), as they require less development effort to be cross-platform.

However, I think there are more exciting possibilities around software meant for a private audience (like Robin Sloan’s great blog post, An app can be a home-cooked meal, or Clay Shirky’s Situated Software).

What if you build an app for one person to use one time? Or maybe for more people to use, but it has an expiration date? Can an app be an inside joke?

Complete ikebana designs from a viewer’s user’s standpoint.

It’s important to think of the user every step of the software development process! This is a unique strength as a designer. Product decisions are made with the company’s interest in mind, and development decisions are made from a feasibility perspective. Design must flex it’s unique strength of advocating for the user.

Ikebana Software may be comparable to painting, music or sculpture.

I thought it was important to end on this note. Software is a medium like any other. It can be a means to an end, or a way to engage creatively with any idea.

Notes

I scanned in images from arrangements from Sogetsu Quarterly Magazine. As mentioned before, the words were taken from Sofu Teshigahara’s The 50 Principles of Sogetsu.

This was an interesting exercise! I signed up for a talk having zero idea what I’d discuss. Coming up with an idea, and honing it down into a five minute, digestible format for a large audience was a stressful but fulfilling challenge. I hope I can continue this in the future!

The Fifty Principles of Sogetsu

2020-02-26T01:27:24+00:00

The Fifty Principles of Sogetsu

by Sofu Teshigahara

The Fifty Principles of Sogetsu is a list of fifty most essential and fundamental points in learning Sogetsu Ikebana. You do not have to learn all of them by heart, but refer to them now and again.

For Beginners

Beautiful flowers do not always make beautiful ikebana.
True ikebana is not isolated from the times or our lives.
The Spirit of ikebana applies to all periods while the style of works may change over time.
Emphasize one flower, one branch. Create the arrangement as an essence of Nature.

Spirit of Practice

Communicate with the flowers as you work with them.
Do not be over-concerned about the result at the beginning of your studies.
Be genuine, serene, and attentive at the practice.

Kakei Styles

Kakei styles are a collection of useful experiences.
Variation styles are based on the basic styles.
Free creation is born out of practice of basic and variation styles.
The Shushi (main stems) constitute the structure, while the Jushi (subordindate stems) flesh out the structure.
Order of practice; from Moribana to Nageire. Use branch materials for the Shin and Soe and stemmed flowers for the Hikae.
The basic upright and slanting styles are the basis for all the Kakei styles.
Variation No. 1 ikebana extends from front to back.
The main branches switch positions in Variation No. 2.
Variation No. 3 is to be viewed from three sides.
Variation No. 4 is a style without the Soe.
In Variation No. 5, the main stems are divided into two units.
Variation No. 6 is to be viewed from all angles.
Variation No. 7 floats on water, spreads, or is placed on a tabletop.
Variation No. 8 is the combination of all Kakei styles.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Practice

The most attentive and talented people take elaborate trouble with the preparation and the after-care.
Use flowers sparingly but generously when necessary.
Learn to fix all the branches in place, being mindful of both sides of the leaves, and create some tension at the base of the arrangement.
In class, the Hikae is more often corrected than the Shin or Soe.
When arranging, take a view of the work from a couple of paces away.
Whether the number of branches is odd or even is not so important as is the tone and harmony of the arrangement.
Make yourself as experienced in arranging Nageire as in Moribana.
Study arrangements that can be made without containers. Study dried and colored materials as well.
Learn the spirit of artless art. Create a work with bones, flesh and skin, understanding the different levels of formality, Shin, Gyo and So, or formal, informal and casual.
Ikebana may be comparable to painting, music or sculpture.

Containers

Green bamboo tubes and simple rustic jars also make the best containers.
Select a container that accentuates the beauty of the ikebana arranged in it.

Rules of Display

The harmony of flowers and containers should fill the entire space.
Home is not the only setting for ikebana. Consider places more personal as well as public.
In addition to the colors of flowers, pay attention to containers, pedestals, walls and lights.
Complete ikebana from a viewer’s standpoint.
Everything should be taken into account: the pedestals, place boards, covering sand and gravel, and the combination of items in the setting.
Ikebana must appear as if it is a product of the environment in which it is displayed.
Flowers for celebration – famous flowers, evergreens, red and white, silver and gold, fruit-bearing branches, and so on.

Preservation of the Fresh Materials

Exposing flowers to wind is even more damaging than keeping them out of water.
Wilting flowers should be cut under water before being arranged.
Water should be preserved in all fresh materials. Basic techniques of preserving water in the materials include: cutting under water, soaking in hot water, singeing, dipping in salt or vinegar, and using a syringe to pump in water.

Essence of Creativity

Be sure to make definitive points of emphasis and avoid redundancy in the arrangement.
If the flowers are the main feature, the container should be subordindte to the flowers. Likewise, if the container is the main focus, then the flowers should be secondary to it.
Dull ikebana lacks dynamics of rhythm, density, and intensity.
Make continuous efforts to find the materials, containers, and place for display.
Remember there are always new, surprising themes and approaches to arranging ikebana.
The four principles of ikebana are a fresh approach, movement, balance and harmony. The three elements are line, color and mass.
Cultivate an eye for appreciation and a hand for creation. A sense of balance is essential. This can only be achieved through constant practice.

Freestyle Ka-bu-wa-ke

2020-02-16T21:31:24+00:00

Yesterday I made a ka-bu-wa-ke arrangement.

The description from my text book reads,

Make an arrangement with two or more Kenzans in a container for Moribana. The key points of this lesson is to pay attention to the space between Kabu, or groups, which are composed on their respective Kenzans.

In Variation No.5 style, you have already learned the composition of arranging the main stems on separate Kenzans in a container. The subject of this lesson which is “Ka-bu-wa-ke” is not about placing the main stems on separate Kenzans.

The Kenzans can be placed in any separated positions. Unlike Variation No.5 style, they can be placed parallel or symmetrically. It is important to create space with artistic tension between separate Kabu. Keep it in mind to show the water, yet Kenzans must be neatly covered by the materials.

The tips of the materials can either be crossing or apart.

Horizontal Composition

2020-02-01T21:04:24+00:00

Today I created a horizontal composition. The description from my textbook reads,

Compose an arrangement which extended horizontally.

The arrangement can be extended both right and left, or only to one side horizontally. There is no particular rule as to the ratio between the vertical length and the horizontal width for the arrangement; the only requirement is to have an overall horizontal composition. In this lesson, you can arrange either Moribana or Nageire.

Remember that the arrangement may not be balanced if too many materials are clumped on one side. Use “Tate-no-soegi-dome,” “Jumonji-dome,” or “Jika-dome” to fix the materials securely in Nageire.

This lesson, as well as “Vertical Composition”, will give you a good chance to observe the plants carefully and discover the characteristics.

In Moribana, do not forget to finish the base part neatly so that the Kenzan is not shown.