The Work of Some Truly Creative Artists

Weeks ago now I went to an Ikebana exhibit at the Takashimaya department store in Yokohama. My invitation and tickets came from two women in my Kozan class who were going to have their own arrangement there. There’s one thing I know that is very important here and that is supporting fellow students, particularly at an event that was as large as this one was. The arrangements shown here were created by my friends, Nagasaki san and Gomi san. Not the best picture sadly, but I can assure you that these two have created some of my favorite arrangements in class.

There was one thing quite different about this exhibition than the many I have been to in the past… the Kozan school was very well represented. It isn’t that the school I study is so small, although it definitely isn’t one of the largest, but it just seems to go largely unnoticed or unknown… in my humble knowledge of the art form. The usual schools also well represented – Sogetsu (a more modern school), Ikenobo (a more traditional, elegantly simple school), etc – but it was the large amount of Kozan that impressed me. Even more surprising was my immediate knowledge of these schools. You see, the tags are all written in Japanese that tell me what the school and the artists name was and yet, I still knew on many of them before my Japanese friends with me translated a stitch of what was on the announcement card. Somehow, in my two years of study, and more importantly, plain old interest, I have gotten to know Ikebana much better than I thought. I really do have something to take home from my time here in Japan that was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I did post some pictures from the exhibit in the sidebar Flickr link, if you are interested. I wouldn’t say that some were my favorites, but some caught my eye and I couldn’t leave without getting a picture of the expressed creativity.

This last picture is from an amateur that you all know. It is my arrangement from class this week. Not quite up to par with the creativity of the exhibit, but I’m sharing anyway.