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Ikebana

Page history last edited by Jennifer L. Davis 14 years, 1 month ago

I first want to start off by saying, “I had so much fun researching and creating this project!” That said, my interest in Japanese flower arrangements stems from my love of gardening. In the warm months, I love to work in my yard. I am very passionate about having nice flower beds and putting something personal in them, so that the work I put into them means something special to me. I just bought my house about 3 years ago, so I am still in the learning stages of landscaping and such, however, my desire to learn and create is strong. Having said that, I first heard of Japanese flower arranging when we read Wabi-Sabi (page 7). I was discussing wabi sabi and my ARTS310 class with my boss at work and she told me that her mother-in-law owns a flower shop in Hendersonville and does Ikebana arrangements. I had to know what that was! So, after further research, I learned that Ikebana is an art, has a history and has a variety of elements.

It is believed that the art of Japanese flower arrangements started with the priests who introduced Buddhism to Japan. The uniqueness of Japanese flower arranging lies in its approach to symmetry and twigs and flowers being shown in their natural state. (As a math major, I appreciate symmetry).

There are many rules to follow when creating an Ikebana flower arrangement. Here are some basic guidelines:

· Lineal Distribution (math major...!): There should exist free flowing lines. Particularly 3 lines that represent Heaven, Man and Earth.
· Imaginary Triangles (again...math major, so I like geometry)
· Three Dimensional
· Right and Left Hand Arrangement

Some basic don’ts:

· Branches that point straight downward
· Branches that point straight to the front
· Two or more branches of the same length
· Branches running horizontally
· Flowers that face each other

Above I have listed some basic do’s and don’ts for Ikebana. However, I decided to make my art project something personal to me. There are a couple of aspects of my art that don't follow the rules of Ikebana: my flowers are artificial, I bent the stems of the flowers and there are charms on my arrangement. My personal Ikebana creation is something that I wanted to be able to keep, therefore I used artificial flowers which, inevitably, led me to bending the stems (mostly to create height). More importantly, my arrangement does have an element of Heaven (family, faith), Man (family, tradition, porcelain vessel, ideas) and Earth (birdseed to represent birds, daisies). Heaven exists in my grandmother whom I was very close to. She passed away in 2002 and she is the one who introduced me to gardening. Man can be seen in the manmade porcelain container the arrangement is in. Also, the charms represent different ideas of man. The simple fact that it is a flower arrangement makes it related to earth. At home, in my flower beds, I have birdfeeders. So, in my mind, the birds represent a sort of freedom as well as obligation on earth. The birds seem to fly freely and peacefully. However, they are working toward a goal just as man does. My arrangement also has imaginary triangles (outlined below); it is three dimensional; and it is a right hand arrangement.