Freestanding structure using leaves

Last year, when I came to the conference we had day where we made freestanding structure is using wood. Since wood is a much more firm surface it was somewhat easier to construct a very stable base. Wood allowed us to use screws for connecting the branches together.

This lesson was to make a freestanding structure outside of a container using leaves, specifically Pendanus. This leaf is much more firm than a typical leaf, but is it still a leaf.

As with building a structure out of wood, balance is very important.

I tried to sketch what I was going to create for my structure. But I found it very difficult to do this because I was unclear as to how I was actually going to attach the various leaves together and also which attachments would actually hold. Thinking ahead as to how to make a form balance without clearly understanding the engineer in mechanics needed for Pendennis was impossible.

A similarity between the branch sculptures we did last year and this year’s leaf sculptures is that the base of the structure is very important. The legs holding the structure up, it’s a base needs to be considered a major element of the arrangement. Another similarity is that it is important to remember that we were trying to make a three-dimensional sculpture.

I was concerned about the fact that we were only using one material. Using one material is challenging because you need to somehow make the creation have visual beauty and sometimes without careful consideration one material can seem uniform.

Unique Form

After seeing the completed arrangements, I felt like the major weight it worked was to make the structure have a very unique form. This made the uniformity of having one material not overpowering.

Figure 1

My strategy (Figure 1) for making my arrangement was to braid the board bottom portion of my legs, hoping to be to use this braiding to make the legs more interesting. Sensei felt that this did not honor the fundamental nature of the leaves I was working with. It took away the power of the plant material and somehow transformed it into a more man-made artificial structure.

Figure 2

Another person bent their leaf (see Figure 2). They used the bend portion of the leaves as the leg . The bend area was touching the table. Kawana-Sensei felt that it took away from the power of having the leaf come directly from the table up. The fundamental energy of a leaf is that it grows straight from the ground up, bending it takes away some of that power and softens/mutes it.

Another person happen to have some leaves that had a little bit of the tip dead. They conscientiously use that dead portion as a part of their design. Sensei really wanted to make sure that we understood how important it is to use material with dead portions consciously. 

Additional criticisms

Too many legs, and uninteresting legs.

Creating a flat arrangement, forgetting to make sure that it the creation is three-dimensional.