squirmelia | Flower-Arranging (Reply)

I looked at her in disbelief and laughed when we gazed upon the black wooden noticeboard near to the village hall and noticed the sign pinned to it, advertising flower-arranging classes. It confirmed our fears about the village, so we ripped the paper from the board, hoping it would be replaced with something a little less twee- graffiti or skyscrapers, perhaps.

Of course, it never was, but a decade or so on, I am reading Douglas Coupland's "Super City", a short book that accompanies his Super City exhibition currently displaying in Montréal. Some of the pages in the book contain squares full of lego collections, freeways, water towers, and surprisingly, ikebana flower arrangements.

Doug writes that when he was at art school in Japan, all students had to study ikebana and now he likes to do a new ikebana every two weeks ("I acknowledge that I'm a child of plastic and machines; ikebana is how I stay rooted.") He also mentions the first time he made the link between architectural forms and ikebana.

The ikebana arrangements in the photos (and indeed, most ikebana arrangements) are not full of voluptuous blooms, bursting from hideously over-filled vases, but are minimalist arrangements, often containing tangles of twigs.

Inspired by this, I collected sticks and leaf skeletons from Asylum Green and then covered some of them in paint. The bundle of twigs on my bedroom floor looks almost as if I intend to start a bonfire, as opposed to any kind of arrangement, but actually, it is my misconceptions that have been cindered, rearranged, much like in other aspects of life, I suppose.