Holding a Peach

PDX Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon, 2012

Ikebana is, of course, decorative, but decorative in the broader sense – as the symbolic representation of nature. By producing something to look at, the arranger aims to activate a whole train of thoughts and feelings. The powers of association that may have influenced an arrangement often seem to strike a similar chord in those who view it. It is the visual impact – the decorative effect, if you will that starts an emotional response.

- Stella Coe, Ikebana - A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Japanese Flower Arrangement.

It was a simple matter to choose a physique for him, for she possessed in her secret, lonely-girls imagination, for her nights pleasure, a stock of thighs, arms, torsos, faces, hair, teeth, necks and knees, and she knew how to assemble them so as to make them a live man to whom she loaned as soul – which was always the same.

-Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers.