The title Living Flowers refers to the unique presence of living flowers in the galleries. The exhibition proposes that the practice of ikebana provides way to consider a range of formal, conceptual, compositional, and pictorial strategies in contemporary art, and that conversely, contemporary art can illuminate the principles and practices of ikebana.
The Japanese art of flower arrangement has its origins in fifteenth-century Japan. Over the centuries, ikebana has been transformed into a highly cultivated art form. Today it is practiced by many different schools of thought. Master practioners of Ikenobo, Ohara, and Sogetsu represent the oldest and most established sensei (teachers) in the Japanese American community of Los Angeles and have achieved high levels of certification by their respective headquarters in Japan.
The works of contemporary art were selected because they have affinities with ikebana and share mutual influences. Some of the art directly references ikebana. Other works explore similar issues of composition, ephemerality, shadow and depth, and the ornamental power of flower imagery. By exhibiting these two different spheres of art, Living Flowers highlights the connections between the cultural traditions of Japan and the West.”
Another picture from the exhibit:
I buy fresh cut flowers once a week for my dining table. My favorite flower is the Lily of the Valley, my late mothers nickname, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_of_the_valley .
Do you have fresh flowers in your house? Do you grow flowers? What is your favorite flower?
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June 30, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Indian Lake Papa
Mama has some rose bushes over 20 years old – we have lived here 15 years !! Yep, she dug em up and brought them with her! I recently bought her two baskets of “double impatient” plants – very pretty!
June 30, 2008 at 7:44 pm
tam
my favorite flowers are daisy’s. all kinds. they are so delicate looking. almost fragile. white ones are my preference. but a pretty bouquet of any flower would not be turned by me!
June 30, 2008 at 11:30 pm
edfromct
It sounds like Mama has a real “green” thumb. Mama must have spent a lot of time cultivating that rose bush so it was a good idea to bring it to the new home. There is a rose bush in Germany that has been growing since AD 815, so Mama should be able to get many more years out of her rose bush.
Impatiens are very pretty flowers, but they are also called “touch me not” so be sure to be careful around those “exploding” seed pods.
June 30, 2008 at 11:49 pm
edfromct
Tam, daisies are very pretty and there over 20,000 different species so you have plenty to choose from. I sometimes get a bouquet of Gerbera daisies to put on my dining room table. Fresh cut flowers can make any room come alive.
July 1, 2008 at 3:30 am
lovewillbringustogether
I also love the Art of Bonsai – although i am not porficient or expereinced in it’s practice!
Growing a tree in miniature is ddefinitely an aesthetic art form to the Japanese.
Out of so many it is hard to chose ONE favourite flower some i admire for their sheer grace and beauty; some for their magnificent fragrances and some for their sheer overwhelming mass of colour.
My favourtite flower in my garden at the moment would be an ‘Epiphylum – Jennifer Ann’ A succuent plant with broad long water-filled fleshy leaves and scalloped edges with small spiney spikes along the outer edges.
Being similar ro some cacti they require little in the way of tending but produce at least two showings per year of massive ( 6-8 inch diameter flowes with numerous slender yellow outer ‘bracts’/petals and pure white to cream inner petals and a superb mass of stamens surrounfing a single pistil with many radiating tendrils at the end. The stamens look like a falling ’shower/waterfall’ and the whole flower is simply beautiful.
I have a picture of four of them in flower at my blog
There are few weks in the year that fresh flowers ( mostly freshly cut from the garden but occasionally ‘collected’ from walks
) do not grace our dining table and presently there are three vases full – Daffodils and daisies, Golden Acacia pompoms and a bowl of growing, pure white cyclamen! 
Nice post Sir!
<B
July 1, 2008 at 5:24 am
Indian Lake Papa
We have a commercial Gladiolus farm near us and you can get a nice fresh cut bouquet for almost nothing! Beautiful!
July 1, 2008 at 7:08 am
art-forums.com
hello.
I wanted to show you that :
http://www.art-forums.com
it’s small. but it’s going to be very big soon, with your help.
thanks to come and register. please post something, present your blog and art or anything.
Thanks.
July 1, 2008 at 11:08 am
therealstorie
I always have fresh flowers cut in my home….roses.
In the winter time, I will buy tulips.
I grow tons of flowers in my yard….they make me feel cheerful and alive.
I rescue and grow orchids….they are my love!
July 1, 2008 at 11:46 am
Storie
Lily of the valley….what a sweet nick name! I love lily of the valley….they grew outside of my bedroom window in the house I grew up in.
July 1, 2008 at 12:53 pm
edfromct
Love, the “Jennifer Ann” is a spectacular looking flower. Thanks for posting the pictures on your blog.
I read in Wkipedia that the fruit is edible. Have you tried it?
“The fruit is edible, very similar to the pitaya fruit from the closely related genus Hylocereus, though not so large, being only 3-4 cm long.”
I have also seen it described as an “Orchid Cactus”. When I visited Arizonia what surprised me the most about the desert country was how beautiful and colorful desert flowers were.
July 1, 2008 at 1:07 pm
edfromct
Storie, you are right, a beautiful vase full of flowers will brighten up any room and their fragrances also acts as a room freshener, as long as you don’t have allergies.
What do you mean when you say you “rescue” orchids? I haven’t heard that term before.
July 1, 2008 at 1:18 pm
edfromct
Papa, you are lucky to live near a commercial grower and can get cheap flowers. A nice bouquet cost $20 and up here. With the cost of living going up this is something I may to to give up soon.
July 1, 2008 at 3:39 pm
therealstorie
Well, this past February I purchased an orchid from the local grocery store. It was gorgeious…..at least 20 full white blooms. Within 2 days the blooms were wilting and falling off the stem.
When I went back to the store I saw that the orchids were all looking the same. By the following week, the orchids were all gone. I asked the florist and she said that the truck that they came in on was too cold, and that they froze. I inquired about all of the plants that the store had. One woman who works there had taken about 30 of them home. The florist thought that there might still be a few left. She took me to the back of the store and there huddled in a very dark corner of the store sat 7 plants.
The florist comped me the 29.99 for the one I bought and with that 29.99 I bought the other 7. I brought them home, put them in Southern light and let them be for several days. They had all been clipped way back, some of the leaves were yellow and wilted. They had been overwatered.
After several days, I assessed them, trimmed the dying leaves and brought into my front window a baker’s rack. I perched them all in different places on the rack. Within one month of bringing them home, all but one flowered!! I couldn’t believe it!
I have given away 4 of them since……2 of them to the widows of the firefighters we lost. I told them this story to encourage them that God put it within us to LIVE….to bloom. and that they would bloom again.
July 1, 2008 at 4:48 pm
edfromct
Storie, that’s the most refreshing story I have read today. Frozen orchids being brought back to life through love and care.
You save orchids and Papa saves horses. Saving lives, both plant and animal, shows how caring people like you make the world a better place.
When I got my first apartment my step-mother gave me a plant to keep. I almost killed it. She “rescued” it and after she died her niece took it. It’s still going strong. You, Love, Mama and my step-mother have green thumbs. I have what ever the opposite of a green thumb is.
July 1, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Storie
have you tried growing sprouts (as in to eat…the ones you put on salad?)
July 1, 2008 at 8:51 pm
edfromct
Storie, I did actually grow a potato in a glass once. Sprouts are pretty easy to grow. The problem I have had with the few plants I have tried to grow is a tend to overwater them.
July 1, 2008 at 11:34 pm
therealstorie
that means you are a caring person:-)
July 3, 2008 at 9:54 pm
lovewillbringustogether
I agree with Storie!
it is possible to kill things with ‘kindness’ – the trend towards obesity in our pets is a disturbing affirmation of this.
RealStorie’s comment was very inspiring too – plants are hard to kill – IF we duplicate as much as possible their NATURAL circumstances ( food water air sunlight temp and soil and watch out for the known pests/viruses)
Assuming that because we like a certain environment that they will also is unadvisable!
and i have also read the Epiphylum fruit is edible but have not tried any – or even seen many come to that… most fruits come from the remnant of a plan’ts flower ( the inner flower being a plants sex organs – where they are fertilised and give ‘birth’ ( bring forth fruit) This plants flowers live for just a few short days and are on thick fleshy stems that bud from the leaf, once the flower dies the stem shrivels and dies then falls off.
i THINK the fruit actually grows from down near the root – but as i say… although i now have five seperate plants i have not seen all that many things i would identify as fruit.
I will watch out for them more and report if i try one
By the way – these plants are ridiculously easy to propagate and care for ( they work best outside in a warm environment though and do not need much more than ‘natural’ rainwatering.
<B