Urban Ikebana

"For artist Neil Tetkowski, clay is a metaphor of the Earth. His art consists of transforming raw material into another state, imbuing it with a sense of soul and identity."

Glass, Paper, 2000 pounds unfired porcelain. NYC

Urban Ikebana - essay by David Revere McFadden

Nature is a profoundly human concept, constructed from a complex series of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical relationships. In nature, we feel part of something larger than ourselves, but we are also aware of our separateness. In nature, bridges and boundaries become virtually indistinguishable.

Ikebana, the ancient art of Japanese flower arrangement, addresses a special relationship with nature. It is an art that depends on the most exacting visual and spiritual discipline. It is an art learned through years of study. Through ikebana we perceive and examine our relationship to nature and art. Ikebana is both boundary and bridge.

Diameter 10 feet, unfired clay and vinyl bag with water.

Ikebana master Akihiro Kasuya, partner and collaborator with Neil Tetkowski in Urban Ikebana, intends his art to create in the viewer the same feelings people enjoy when hearing a piece of great music. The physical and sensual experience of sound in music nourishes the soul. Likewise, the experience of ikebana can become a gateway to an amplified experience of nature, art, and ourselves.

For artist Neil Tetkowski, clay is a metaphor of the Earth. His art consists of transforming raw material into another state, imbuing it with a sense of soul and identity. What emerges from the kiln are objects the artist calls "diary notations of actions or events." It is this pervasive and powerful sense of process that engages the viewer of these energetic and muscular works.

In traditional ikebana, a similar emphasis on process prevails. Selection and placement of individual elements, leaves, branches, or flowers transform them from nature into art.

Urban Ikebana is a unique collaborative project that brings together three artists, Kasuya, Tetkowski, and performance artist Julia Mandle. It has been organized by Takako Michii, who has a long record of coordinating cultural and artistic projects between the US and Japan. Kasuya is head of the Ichiyo School of Ikebana, founded sixty years ago by his family. He began his own studies in ikebana at age six, and made his debut exhibition in Tokyo at the age of seventeen. Kasuya has been a leading exponent of modern ikebana, responding to the contemporary world through provocative installations using a broad and often surprising range of materials. While traditional flowers, branches, and leaves may be used in his ikebana, the artist also embraces found objects, steel, paper, and plastic.

Cobblestone, iron tools and unfired clay

The heritage of ikebana grows from ancient Shinto beliefs. Originally, ikebana arrangements of plant materials were offered to Shinto gods, a gesture of obeisance that linked the spiritual world to the physical. By the 7th century, ikebana had moved into domestic interiors as a refined art form. The power of ikebana to express profound spiritual values remained; ikebana was a metaphor for the universe. Ikebana speaks to our enduring fascination with the fleeting and temporary beauty of nature, and to our aesthetic and spiritual response to this fragile beauty. According to Kasuya, ikebana is about the relationship between nature and art, but also about an expanded definition of nature that embraces all human actions and creations, including technology. The modern art of ikebana is a journey into a modern concept of nature.

A similar journey of exploration of nature has been taken by Tetkowski over the past two decades. A student at Alfred University and Illinois State University, Tetkowski first exhibited his ceramics in 1978. Since then he has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. In the 1990s, he began a landmark series of performance events using clay to express and record a personal choreography of art in action. The artist's work has evolved over the years from vessel forms to sculpture. The artist's energy, movement, and gestures are recorded as "footprints" in massive organic disks and wall-hung forms. Embedded in these lush naturalistic forms are real fragments of industrial urban culture, iron spikes, screws, and hooks, as well as incuse images pressed into the moist clay using castoff tools and machines.

In Urban Ikebana, three artists join forces, merging materials, movement, and meaning to create a tangible but temporary diary of process. Tetkowski says, "We are interested in building on the traditional context of both ikebana and pottery, respectively. The natural and the artificial will be presented holistically. We see humanity and the environment as a single system."

This project serves to redefine nature by expanding its definition to include the urban environment.

In Urban Ikebana, a large unfired clay circle dominates the space. In this circle is the dancer, as well as found objects, carefully selected and arranged. The dancer is transformed by the artist, her body literally and figuratively clothed with raw clay. In the gallery, above three 6-foot clay mandalas are suspended ikebana arrangements combining natural and man-made objects.

The motif of the unbroken circle, of continuity in action, pervades the installation. Cycles of creation and destruction are suggested by the actions of installation as well as the materials used by the artists. In Kasuya's ikebana arrangements, organic and synthetic materials, elements from nature or manufactured artifacts found on city streets, are combined in a fleeting and temporary construction that will change over time. In Urban Ikebana, raw and fired clay, natural and found materials, and the actions of process are brought together. The viewer becomes a part of this work in progress; we recognize ourselves in the act of creation.

Fundamental to ikebana is the concept of spontaneity, achieved with the rigorous discipline of form. Form learned through repeated and dedicated practice ultimately becomes invisible in the work. All three artists in Urban Ikebana work within this system of belief; form has become "second nature," and is revealed through spontaneous action. At the same time, the viewer is invited to become a part of the process, and to complete what is set in motion by the artists. By juxtaposing nature and our urban environment, and reminding us of the unity of process and product, we are asked to consider our own role and responsibility in sustaining the complex environment of which we are a part. Urban Ikebana explores art as process and as artifact, and celebrates both the art of nature and the nature of art.

David Revere McFadden, Chief Curator, Musuem of Contemporary Arts, New York City

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