Artistic research, pedagogical method, collaboration, initiated in 2023.
Flower Round is an experimental pedagogical method for sharing techniques and aesthetic impulses between artists who work with botanical materials.
I have been seeking to evolve my skills working with flowers, but have been unsatisfied with classical learning environments. I have therefore initiated a series of pedagogical experiments by composing arrangements in dialogue with floral artists whom I admire. The working title of the method, Flower Round, references a marginal practice in Japanese Ikebana culture called mawari-bana, “round-flower”, in which participants take turns adding flowers to an arrangement.
Flower Round is however not limited to this sequential, call-and-response mode of creation, rather appropriate modes of dialogue and collaboration are determined together with the artists who participate. The emphasis is on sharing techniques, methods, impulses, ideas, and beliefs in a kind of horizontal mode of mutual mentorship.
So far, I have created arrangements in dialogue with Paris-based Ikebana artist Hiroyuki Morita and floral-textile scenographer Romain Pischedda. New techniques for handling, arranging, affixing, stabilising, and modifying botanical materials were shared between us, and we each tried aesthetic experiments that we had not considered on our own.
