Happy Thanksgiving 2024!

Once again, we find ourselves approaching a holiday season with uncertainty in our nation and indeed, the world. Such challenges make us look to what we have in our own lives, close to us, and cherish those people, things, and places even more. On this holiday of gratitude, let's give thanks for the things that make us good, strong, honorable, and loving human beings. Let's give thanks to the people who bring light and calm and love to our lives and to the world. Let's give thanks for the generous actions and goodwill in our lives--whether done by others or ourselves--that strengthen the fabric of humanism and the choices to unite, protect, and find value in this existence, and which can combat the turbulence, pain, uncertainty, and darkness. Hold dear these things and live up to these ideals for which we are grateful. Let's find value in ourselves and others, and express this gratitude in our intentions, deeds, and words. Let's be grateful for the value of the human experience, love, and life itself.

Floral arrangement and table setting by Holly Chapple

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Zen Moment

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

BEAUTY: Installation--"Floating Flower Garden – Flowers and I are of the same root, the Garden and I are one"

An art collective in Japan calling themselves teamLab have mounted a very magical installation called "Floating Flower Garden – Flowers and I are of the same root, the Garden and I are one," which consists of a room full of suspended, motion controlled living blossoms that raise and lower according to where visitors are moving.

"A floating flower garden filled with living flowers that float up and down in relation to the movement of people in the space.

When a viewer gets close to this flower-filled space, the flowers close to the viewer rise upwards all at once, creating a hemispherical space with the viewer at its center. In other words, although the whole space is filled with flowers, a hemispherical space is constantly being created with the viewer at its center and the viewer is free to move around wherever they want. If many viewers get close to one another, the dome spaces link up to form one single space.
In this interactive floating flower garden viewers are immersed in flowers, and become completely one with the garden itself.

Over 2,300 floating flowers bloom in the space. These flowers are alive and growing with each passing day.

Each flower has a partner insect and the scent of the flowers becomes stronger at the time that the insect is most active, as a result the scent of the air in the garden space changes according to the time of day, morning, noon, and evening.

Japanese Zen gardens are said to have been born as a place for Zen priests to carry out training so that they can become one with nature, the garden is a microcosm of the vastness of the surrounding natural mountain areas where they gathered to train.

There is a Zen kōan (a question or story that is part of a Zen priests theological training) called, “Nansen’s Flower”. A man named Rikukô Taifu, while talking with Nansen, said, “Jô Hoshi says, ‘Heaven and I are of the same root. All things and I are of the same substance.’ How wonderful this is!”. Nansen, pointing at a flower in the garden said, “People of these days see this flower as if they were in a dream.”

A person will become integrated with a flower when they look at a flower and the flower looks at them, possibly at this time the person will truly see the flower for the first time."

I love teamLab's "About" page from their website:
"teamLab is an Ultra-technologists group made up of specialists in the information society such as; Programmers (User Interface Engineers, Database Engineers, Network Engineers, Hardware engineers, Computer Vision Engineers, Software Architects), Mathematicians, Architects, CG Animators, Web Designers, Graphic Designers, Artists, Editors and more. We create works through “experimentation and innovation” making the borders between Art, Science, and Technology, more Ambiguous."

http://www.team-lab.net/en

"Iced Flowers" by Makoto Azuma

Botanical artist Makoto Azuma created a collection of dramatic, sculptural floral arrangements encased in ice for "Iced Flowers," his (by necessity) short lived exhibition last month, January 2015, in Japan.

http://azumamakoto.com/