I am super excited about being a participant in a recently published art book “Poetical Ikebana”. Two of my compositions are featured in the book along with about 150 other works of Ikebana artists from around the world.

The concept of this book is quite unique: participants were invited to illustrate 3 haiku poems with their Ikebana arrangements. We could select from a list of 35 haiku – traditional Japanese poetic form, very minimalist and philosophical, just like Ikebana is.

It was an interesting challenge and I enjoyed it immensely. Creating the arrangements is always a great pleasure for me. The more intense part is working together with a photographer on “letting others see what I have seen”. It is an interesting collaborative process. A photographer participates in part of creation as much as the artist: the final product is a photograph of the arrangement, not just the arrangement itself. Having similar artistic tastes and being able to communicate well is critical.

Selection of the illustrations for the book was made through blind voting by a team of Ikebana experts. As a participant you literally do not know whether your arrangements are selected or not until you arrive to the book presentation at the publisher. I was very happy to find out that 2 out of my 3 haiku illustration were published. The one, which did not make it to the book was actually my favorite! But of course every cloud has a silver lining: this means I retain the rights for the picture and therefore can share it with you here.

The haiku I illustrated with this arrangement is by Ann Colpaert:

just before dawn

the whole universe

filled by one blackbird.

…..

I have recently searched for the “Poetical ikebana” book online. You can buy it on Amazon anywhere in the world! Here is the link to this book on the German Amazon:

on the UK Amazon:

Amazon.com also has it, check it out in case shipping and handling from the US makes fore sense for you: