2023/6/24-25 : Los Angeles County Museum of Art to present Sogetsu Ikebana and Kuniharu Yoshida’s calligraphy demonstrations in conjunction with “Sam Francis and Japan” exhibition, June 24-25
LOS ANGELES (Cultural News: Forwarded for Los Angeles County Museum)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Saturday & Sunday, June 24-25, 2023
Celebrating Sam Francis’s 100th Birthday!!
Sam Francis would have turned 100 on June 25. To celebrate his birthday and the cultural and artistic exchanges highlighted in Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing, participate in two days of calligraphy and ikebana demonstrations, workshops, talks, and family activities presented by Kuniharu Yoshida, Ravi GuneWardena, and Sogetsu L.A.
Saturday, June 24
Sogetsu Ikebana Demonstration
11 am–12:30 pm | Smidt Welcome Plaza
Talk—The Art of Sogetsu: A Century of Collaborations at the School of Ikebana, by Ravi GuneWardena
2 pm | Resnick Terrace
Sunday, June 25
Calligraphy Performance with Kuniharu Yoshida
11 am | Resnick Pavilion
Join LACMA for a live Calligraphy Performance with Kuniharu Yoshida at 11 AM PT to see an artwork created in real time. Presented in conjunction with Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing. Click on the link to register for the Zoom webinar. Q&A with Kuniharu Yoshida to follow.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kmA5-uIjTMKauJOVfO1EGA
Andell Family Sundays: Making Ikebana Family Activity
12:30–3:30 pm | Resnick Terrace
Calligraphy Performance with Kuniharu Yoshida
2 pm | Resnick Pavilion
Ikebana arrangements will be on view in the Resnick Pavilion on Saturday, 1–5 pm, and Sunday, 11 am–5 pm.
About the Participants
Ravi GuneWardena is Los Angeles architect and ikebana teacher and has been a practitioner of ikebana since 2005 under the tutelage of Haruko Takeichi, a master in the Sogetsu School.
During his recent tenure as director of Sogetsu Los Angeles, he facilitated collaborations with various local artists and organizations, expanding the visibility of ikebana as a contemporary art.
As a partner at Escher GuneWardena Architecture, he has been involved with the design of various spaces for art, artist collaborations, and the restoration of numerous modernist houses. GuneWardena was selected for elevation to the AIA’s College of Fellows in February 2023.
GuneWardena will talk about artist collaborations at Sogetsu, the renowned school of Japanese flower arranging based in Tokyo, Japan. Sogetsu, founded in 1927 to position the practice of ikebana as a contemporary art form, has a long history of collaborations with modern artists, including Sam Francis, and provided a forum for contemporary art, film, music and performance throughout the 20th century.
Kuniharu Yoshida is a Japanese calligrapher, hip-hop dancer, and teacher, and is one-fourth of the concept art collective In the Attic based in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.
He collaborates with artists to combine sublime arts, merging traditional with the contemporary. Respect between different cultures is the foundation of Kuniharu’s unique work, designed to intertwine not just art but also audiences.
Most notably, his works have been included in Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s Uneo Art exhibition with Tamayura-kai and Atelier Cosmos, he has given lectures at Netflix, and, most recently, he was the Little Tokyo Service Center’s (LTSC), +LAB Artist in Resident, where his project First Street North won Best Documentary Short in the 2019 Asian Film Festival of Dallas.
