Flower vases (hanaire) for Ikebana and Chabana

These bold asymmetrical flower vases, stem from 16th century tea ceremony aesthetics in Japan. Yet, when I make them I find they share much with the best of the American action painters of the 1950’s and 1960’s. The fluid masses and gouged sweeping strokes are done in an instant; an instant when the potter, drawing on years of experience, is completely in action responding to the material as it takes shape. There is no place for hesitation, insecurity, or pre-determination. These would produce a weak, insubstantial result. So in a hanaire we can find, perhaps, one of De Kooning’s women. Or we are taken back to the vigorous movement of Jackson Pollack over a canvas on his studio floor. These pieces register vigorous movement, informed by years of experience.

Both forms are studies in balanced asymmetry. A potter composes the spinning cylinder of clay just as a painter approaches a blank canvas; each gesture, bulge of form, compression of cylinder, or mark informs the next. Viewing a composition, what is absent (the open space between marks and gestures, the proportions) is as important as what is present.

Flower vases (hanaire), are meant to perform as the beginning of a composition which is completed by the Ikebana. Ikebana is often translated as flower arranging but perhaps better thought of as sculpture with biological materials.