December Meeting
Sunday December 15
Holiday Party!
No Horticultural Competition for December instead we will have a
Gingerbread Garden Contest click here for rules
1 pm Yoshie Takahashi Topic: Aesthetics through Ikenobo Ikebana, Japanese Flower Arranging
About the Speaker: Yoshie Takahashi is a senior professor of Ikenobo Ikebana, the meditative art of Japanese floral arranging. She has taught and lectured for more than forty years and done arrangements at the Metropolitan Museum, The Asia Society in New York, Hofstra University and LIU Post among many others. Ikebana’s roots are found in the religious offertory flowers that were presented by priests to the Buddhist and Shinto gods so the arrangements were very traditional and symbolic for Japanese culture and are represented by hundreds of different schools, the oldest on record dating back to 1500. Ikebana is not just about making a pretty arrangement, but is part of the discipline of Zen Culture searching for enlightenment through proper arrangement of natural, often seasonal, materials.
After her lecture, Professor Takahashi will make several Ikebana arrangements to show several different styles based on the 555 year old Ikenobo School’s rules. Most traditional arrangements have three main points based on a triangle: heaven, the highest point, humankind, the intermediate point, and earth, the lowest. Another practitioner commented that with Ikebana a “Less is more mentality governs such arrangements. The beauty comes from what isn’t there as much as what is there.” We shall see for ourselves at the December meeting!
Chinese Auction
Elfin Chorus
Gingerbread Garden Contest
