While there are plenty of flowers that I like the looks of, irises have always exerted a special pull. As a mythology-obsessed little kid I learned that the flower borrows it's name from Iris, the Greek gods' errand-girl. The iris is the state flower of Tennessee, where I grew up, and around this time every year, gardens bulge with everything from waist-high ruffled and bearded versions to absurdly delicate miniature varietals native to Siberia. The flowers are a startling rainbow: from every shade of purple, to green, yellow, peach, black, and the twinging red of a skinned knee. Along with unicorns and rainbows, they were one of my favorite things to draw, with that fascinating arrangement of opposed and off-set petals that seem to do-si-do each other around in some botanical take on square dancing.
When I moved to Japan, the irises came out around the same time that homesickness hit me, and I took a therapeutic trip out to the country to see a famous flooded garden that boasts--if I remember right--upwards of 400,000 blooms. It was an amazing sight, and so very Japanese; I got into line with hundreds of other tourists and we wound a slow conga around a mile-long wooden boardwalk, stopping every three feet for photos.
Irises are endemic to Japan, but they have also been cultivated for centuries, and the three main types (HanashÅbu, Kakitsubata, Ayame) are a staple of traditional poetry and visual arts. Because the leaves resemble swords, the iris is also a key symbol of the Japanese holiday that is now Children's Day, but used to be Boys' Day (May 5th).
My carved iris is equal parts therapy and homework. Over recent years, I've set myself various carving assignments based on old forms or masters in order to build my skills (like my holly chain). While most of my own work is figurative, I find super-carver Grinling Gibbons' limewood carvings of flowers and foliage both intimidating and inspirational. I decided I would give flowers a try and somehow a single flower seemed a more reasonable starting point than an entire garland. For my material I chose a twisted branch of boxwood that's been seasoning in my closet since one of my neighbors chopped down the bushes in his yard about 18 months ago. Typically used for Medieval rosary beads and Japanese netsuke, boxwood holds crisp details and begs to be touched; it starts out the color of old cream or fresh butter, and darkens to caramel after years of human contact and soaking up skin oils.
And of course, it had to be an iris. In the aftermath of the disasters in Japan, irises were on my mind, as a comforting symbol of the tenacious and adaptive beauty of a country than means so much to me. And as I worked to find the ghost of the form inside the rough branch, tornadoes and then flood waters ripped through the South, giving me even more to think about.
So it's not a glossy calendar iris that I'm carving. It's twisted, drenched, and bedraggled, but most importantly, it just is. Or it will be, in another twenty or thirty hours.
Here are a few of the things I've been mulling over during the long hours of carving:
-The absurdity of making stuff
-The absurdity of "growing" a flower inside a tree branch
-How different cultures accommodate natural forces and cycles
-Individual fragility and group resiliency
-How misleading our perceptions of safety and vulnerability can be
-Borrowing concepts of seasonality and "locavorism" from food and applying them to art
My intention was to cut off the rough ends and mount the flower as a large brooch, but now I'm not so sure. Does everything I make really need to be wearable? I think for now I'll keep it as it is.
I take a picture more or less every time I change CDs (listening to Alan Hollinghurst's novel Line of Beauty). I'll keep adding pictures below until I decide to leave well enough alone.
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