Wednesday 16 April 2014

Back in LA

I always try to find something ikebana related to do when I'm out traveling. There is so much to learn from meeting others and ikebana people are a largely welcoming species. This time in LA I hooked up with Ravi GuneWardena a Sogetsu practitioner and architect with whom I've been communicating by e-mail a year ago. Ravi very gracefully offered to take us to see some interesting examples of midcentury modern Californian houses. When the sun went down we ended up at a nice restaurant in LA's Little Tokyo district, discussing Sogetsu iemoto Akane Teshigahara's visit to LA at the North American Sogetsu Seminar 2013.


Ravi and Frank Escher of Escher GuneWardena Architecture were hired to design the exhibition Living Flowers Ikebana and Contemporary Art at Japanese American National Museum 2008. With simple materials, fabric and paper, they adapted Japanese architectural elements such as shoji screens and tokonoma as a framework for the exhibition, showing works of contemporary artists alongside ikebana created by masters of the Ikenobo, Ohara, and Sogetsu schools of ikebana.

Photo: Japanese American National Museum

They also curated the exhibition Flowers for Pauline at MAK center/Schindler House in 2012.

This video was produced by JANM for the 2008 exhibition, featuring interviews with teachers from the three participating schools:



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