Wood Sculpture Notes – Master Class

October 27, 2018

Kawana Master Class Boston 

Guiding Principles from Kawan-Sensei

Sogetsu Ikebana has a lot more fluidity than many other forms of Ikebana.

Sogetsu is not just about working with flowers and branches. It can be working with, shadows, landscape art, or even performance. Do not forget about the fact that this school allows the use of mixed media.

Wood Sculpture

Goal: build a freestanding wood structure with at least 3 legs supporting the structure. This lesson does not integrate flowers or other media, you are only using wood in this particular lesson.

Extra attention should be paid to the legs of your structure. They are a part of the overall arrangement and not an afterthought. So while you must have three points touching, try not to make them into a simple triangle, because that is not very interesting.

A secondary goal:

To be exposed to different mechanical methods of making things stick together or be arranged in different ways. Saws, screws, nails,and wire are perhaps new methods of working with Ikebana materials.

Critique Lessons Learned

• Making a triangle at the base.
• Having one leg too big. Strength in the base is not necessarily predicated on the strength of the individual branches.
• Making the base too wide. While attention to the base structure is important, it should not be the focus, creating a wide base can take away attention from the upper portion of the structure.
• Just because you made the structure stand up does not mean that you created ikebana.