SATURDAY WORKSHOP

The July activity on the Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter program was a Saturday workshop. Two workshops have now been held this year, the recent one was lead by Yukako Braun, the head of the Ikenobo School in Melbourne. The theme of the workshop was: Freestyle, paying attention to the principles of shape. The forms were: Circle, Triangle, Square, Vertical, Horizontal, Slanting, Cascading and Gathering. By way of demonstration Yukako and her pupils presented arrangements in some of the forms.

This circle form arrangement was created by Yukako and features surfaces, points and focus(accent).

Arrangement with Triangles by Julie Ayers.

Vertical arrangement by Bill Riches.

This second circle form arrangement was created by Angela Chau.

After the presentation by Yukako, members created arrangements on one of these themes. Yukako then gave a critique commenting on each of the arrangements by the 25 members at the workshop.

Below are photos of the individual members.

Betty Karanikolopoulos

Toula Karanikolopoulos

Aiko Nakada

Lyn Wong

Emily Karanikolopoulos 

Trish Ward

Helen Novic

Robyn Unglik

Philip Keon

Margaret Leung

Greta Young

Julie Ireland

Marjorie Campkin-Smith

Nicole McDonald

Marcia Lamrock

Beverley Webster

Christopher James

Ivy Loo

Swan Lam

Margaret Wilson

Shaneen Garbut

Chieko Yazaki

Felicia Huang

Judy Hajdu

Chiemi Daly

JUNE MEETING

The guest speaker for our meeting this month was Craig Wilson from Gentiana Nursery at Olinda, east of Melbourne. Craig gave a highly informative talk on the subject of ‘Native Bonsai’. That is, bonsai created using Australian native plants. We learnt that these plants have very different requirements to bonsai created from northern hemisphere plants in general and Japanese plants in particular.

As part of his presentation Mr Wilson showed four beautiful creations of his, the oldest being raised from tube stock over 35 years ago. His examples included (left to right) a Western Australian leptospermum, casaurina, Leptospermum laevegatum and banksia marginata.

After Mr Wilson's presentation Lee Johnstone gave a demonstration of a freestyle moribana arrangement using only Australian native materials and Banksia as the focal material.

          

This is her final creation.

At the meeting members created ikebana some of which included using Australian native materials.

Greta Young 

Emily Karanikolopoulos

Akemi Suzuki

Aiko Nakada

Beverley Webster

Bill Riches

Nicole MacDonald

Betty Karanikolopoulos

Lyn Wong

Marcia Lamrock

Toula Karanikolopoulos

MAY MEETING

The meeting on 8th May was attended by 38 people including our co-patron Mrs Yoko Matsunaga, wife of the Consul General of Japan, and 5 other visitors. The theme for the meeting was Autumn Grasses in a Basket. A demonstration on the theme was given by Aiko Nakada, head of the Ohara School in Melbourne. 

Aiko created a beautiful naturalistic arrangement in a tall basket using a variety of autumn materials. The tallest material  capturing the autumn grasses feeling was a stem of variegated miscanthus.

Here is her completed work. Below are some of the arrangement made by other members at the meeting.

Bill Riches

Lyn Wong

Kim Ng

Chiemi Daly

Nicole McDonald

Marjorie Campkin-Smith

Lee Johnstone

Qui Nguyen

Akemi Suzuki

Chieko Yazaki

Helen Marriott

Sally Wilkinson

Betty Karanikolopoulos

Emily Karaniklolopoulos

Toula karanikolopoulos

Elizabeth Angell

Trish Ward