For over 3 years running, I've been making flower arrangements for my building lobby, the Eagle Warehouse.

The best part of this job is having this audience of over 100
people that have stayed with me. Their criticisms and compliments have helped me grow and improve. They are a very diverse and opinionated group, many of whom are artists, architects and designers. Some like my minimal, classic ikebana designs and others prefer lusher, more western arrangements with lots of flowers. So I get to experiment and
challenge myself to come up with different designs every week

This arrangement got me a handwritten note from Apt 4G:
"This is the most exquisite and artistic flower arrangement
I have ever seen!!!!"

I feel so happy and lucky.

calla lilies, hydrangea, ruskus, mini crabapple branches

I picked up these vine balls at a yard sale, found this funky container made of water hyacinth bark at the Brooklyn Flea. My friend Mary gave me a bunch of water hyacinth seeds and reeds from Thailand.
The bamboo rods I'd saved from an old tropical arrangement.
Wa la: Instant arrangement!
Not your mother's ikebana arrangement, but i think my sensei would be ok with it---i kinda recall her saying that her sensei, the Sogetsu School founder, used to say that anyone can make ikebana with anything, anywhere, anyhow. How do you like my Anywho piece?

Driftwood

Driftwood can add so much pizazzzz to ikebana!

Aren't these
amazing?
I saw these
on my cross-
country road
trip this summer. Oh
I wanted sooo badly to bring them home with me, but I
would've gotten arrested because a) they were in a national forest, and b) they were HUGE. I would've needed a semi to lug these babies home to my tiny bkln apt, and then c) my husband and dog would have to move out....[sigh]. So, over to you...next time you're in Yellowstone and you have more guts and a bigger truck, be my guest---just promise me you'll let me borrow one of them now and then, ok?

Viburnum branches + berries, smoketree leaves.

My father gave me this unusual ceramic vase. He bought it in Taiwan from an old ikenobo master, who said he hardly ever used it since he got it in Japan in the 70's, and was happy to sell it.
I don't know why because it had me at hello. Maybe it was the vivid tangerine color reminiscent of that groovy era? Or its unique geometry: square but elegantly curved on one side with a peekaboo window, and flat on the other with a large full-moon-like opening.
I am learning that unique vases like this one are very demanding. Focal points in of themselves, they seem to compete with any flowers I tried to add. Finally, I went with no flower--- just branches, berries and leaves.
Maybe that's why its original owner, who was a florist now, was willing to part with it?

Brooklyn jellyfish ballet

Aren't these jellyfishes mesmerizing? I couldn't take my eyes off them at the Aquarium on Brooklyn's Coney Island. I wanted to take them home with me but didn't want to get arrested, so instead I made this video. I love their dreamy, rhythmic choreography and tantalizing display of feathery, ribbon-like tentacles. I think I"m so attracted to them because they're flower-like. They make me want to make my flower arrangements more rhythmically beautiful...my thoughts go to a lotus pond in Taiwan, where a summer breeze stirred the lotus flowers to sway and dance. It was a spectacularly magical moment: another one of nature's perfectly choreographied ballets. [note: be sure to mute the audio before playing]

Mazezashi=Mixed composition of 5 or more materials.

There was an abundance of beautiful, richly colorful wildflowers at class today. It was a wonderful opportunity to try my hand at a mazezashi freestyle arrangement. It wasn't easy. With so many materials to incorporate, I found it difficult to carve out some negative space. The overall effect, that of a lush summer field, wild and free, beckoning you to come frolic within. If I were a bumblebee, I'd think I died and went to heaven there... Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!

Tenri Gallery NY 2010 Sogetsu Show

Did you see the recent Sogetsu NY exhibition at the Tenri Gallery?
Here are 2 arrangements from the show, by A.Sano and N.Kawana, respectively.
I was struck by their bold geometric compositions.
Quite unique, aren't they?
I kept staring at them. I was stumped by a couple of questions. 1) is a good ikebana arrangement necessarily pretty ? 2) when is it considered going too far when organic materials are manipulated to look not so organic any more? I don't know, do you?
Good art stimulates, stretches the imagination, or makes one stop and think---that I do know.

To view more arrangements from the show, go to
the upper right "Page" section and click "Tenri".