Ikebana (生け花)

Reflection

I took this course to work my creative muscles. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer, but the creativity I utilize there has to do with problem solving, e.g. designing an algorithm or choosing how to code something up. I've had some experience dabbling in the arts before: I know some Art History and do some photography from time to time. Last semester, I took a Vegatable Gardening course, so a Flower Arrangement course was a natural successor. I have been exposed to Japanese culture for a while now; as a teenager I would read manga, which eventually turned into watching films and reading classic literature.

Coming to class every week was intimidating. The idea of creating a brand new arrangement each time seemed like a daunting task, but the challenge of creation is something I know I should do. At first, I overthought a lot: my first arrangement had an entire symbolism behind it, but when I looked at the final product, I couldn't even care about that anymore since I didn't find it aesthetically pleasing. From that week forward, I decided to approach each arrangment from a visual standpoint. Let me first decide on some composition, have an initial idea for the energy I was going for, and then build and modify the arrangment until I reached the final concept. Often, I would get ideas after seeing how my original ideas didn't look the way I wanted them to. Sometimes, like in Arrangement 2, I stuck stricly to my original theme (horizontal surface), and it turned out well. Other times, like in Arrangement 4, I changed the flowers and positions of the circles several times. Every time I would create something, I would take checkpoints to evaluate and see where the arrangement was naturally leading itself. I think I now understand how some artists say the the work creates itself: I could impose my will on what I thought I wanted the arrangment to be like, but halfway through, I would realize I would be working to please the arrangement itself and design it to realize its best form.

By the end of the class, I felt much more relaxed. I no longer felt the pressure to be perfect in my arrangements and trusted the process of an imperfect original idea that should change throughout the course of its creation. My favorite arrangments were the later ones, as each week I felt more free to experiment and trusted my artistic instinct. However, this wasn't easy, per se. I would always use the full 2 hours to plan and arrange each one, often going over time. Even the original brainstorming phase would take at least 10 minutes to just get a seedling of an idea. This was especially true in the hanging arrangment, where I also had to consider how I wanted to design the canvas itself.

Aside from the above personal learning from experience, I learned the underlying theory that would provide the language for me to design my arrangments with. The free style, jiyuka, had core concepts that I would reference every time I would begin: lines, surface, points and mass. On a larger scale, I would always begin with the direction of the composition: vertical, slanting, and horizontal. A custom vase would influene the composition as well. In my fourth arrangment, I had a vase that only had a small opening on the top right, while the vase itself existed in the bottom left. So, it felt natural to make it slanting. In the later weeks, we were able to experiment with more colors, which allowed me to evoke more feelings and themes. The biggest example of this are my miniature arrangements, which have completely different color palettes, and thus different feelings.

Perhaps the most fun element, and introduced to me for the first time in this course, was the concept of ma and embracing the empty space. To view that nothingness as an element of the arrangment changed my perspective and allowed me to see the arrangement as not just putting flowers around, but deciding how to arrange the flowers and space it existed in. I enjoyed using ma in my fourth and last arrangments, where space not only exists in the vase itself, but I carved out the space above with thin branches and leaves. The space always exists, we choose to intersect and shape it.

The concept of kokoro could be found in flowers as well, something I did not expect. Just like how our dispositions exist in a certain mood and change, the arrangement can exhibit a certain kokoro. The choice of plants, composition, and colors all evoke different moods. Gunji-sensei would emphasize to decide on a kokoro to base the arrangment around: is it Happy? Is it energetic? Relaxed? Assertive? If a painting could evoke emotion and tell a story, a flower arrangment could exhibit a kokoro. For a viewer to understand what it might be, they just need to ask themselves, "What impression does this leave on me?"

As this class is over, I take with me several lessons: aesthetic design concepts that will allow me to arrange my own flowers in the future, as well as the Japanese traditional concepts of ma and kokoro that pervade multiple art forms and even transcend them into life perspectives. I'll gladly start arranging my own flowers to decorate the spaces where I live and do so for others. On a personal level, the value of nothingness has increased in my mind. Nothingness in sound (silence), nothingness in space, and nothingness in activity (meditation). All of these are essential to the life experience, especially when I am overwhelmed with all the non-nothingness in the modern world. Lastly, the concept of Kokoro feeds into my own self-reflection. The inherent acceptance of oursevles and our changing dispositions is the ultimate acknowledge of the duality of own humanity with the capacity to rise above to a higher state of enlightenment. I'll always strive to reach there and accept that when I don't, it's just my kokoro going through its endlessly changing state.

- Sean