Inspiring a Fresh Outlook

Kathleen Lemler believes in flower power.

Lemler teaches ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging. Through their beauty, the simple arrangements have the power, she believes, to heal the sick and make people feel happier.

Lemler and others who practice the Sangetsu style of ikebana have been quietly slipping their artistry into places like hospitals, prisons, schools--even the offices of Los Angeles’ mayor and district attorney--with lofty hopes of changing the world.

Whether you feel the power or not, you can see the flower artistry Sunday when the Sangetsu School of Flower Arranging holds an international ikebana exhibit at Oxnard’s Mandalay Beach Resort.

The free event runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a special demonstration at 2 p.m. About 140 arrangers from Brazil, Greece, Canada, as well as Japan and the United States, will use the four seasons as the inspiration for their creations.

If you are new to ikebana, don’t expect to see bouquets like the ones you wire Mom for Mother’s Day. Ikebana is a world away from those voluminous, symmetrical arrangements with their hodgepodge of flower types.

“We use fewer flowers and varieties,” Lemler said as she quickly put the final touches on a simple arrangement of sunflowers, kiwi vine, crocosmia buds and aster sprig.

“Line is important in ikebana,” she said. So is asymmetry, in contrast to the Western look. “You create balance through imbalance.”

Ikebana is hardly a new idea, in Japan anyway. It dates to the 6th century, when Buddhist monks fashioned flower arrangements in the temples as offerings to the gods.

Today in Japan it’s an art form, an important part of Japanese education. You see it all over--even on public buses. Both men and women study it for years. There are hundreds of ikebana schools, all with their own twist on the discipline’s artistry or philosophy.

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The Sangetsu school was formed in Japan in 1975. Its founder felt that ikebana practitioners were too wrapped up in the art--they had lost sight of the beauty in nature and the spiritual energy of the flowers.

“We try to be true to nature,” said Lemler, who became involved with ikebana in 1977. She pointed to a blemish on a leaf in the arrangement she was working on. “It shows its beauty even when it’s eaten by a bug.”

In Lemler’s classes, held at Ventura College and other local sites, students sip ginger tea as they work. The soft strains of Asian music play in the background. They work quickly and gently to cut the stems, pushing the flowers and branches onto a holder full of pins that lets them stand in the vase at any angle. The less handling, the better for the flower’s health and spiritual well-being.

“You have to feel with the flower, how it wants to be arranged,” said Lemler. The design should follow the lines of a triangle representing the sun, moon and Earth.

“The flowers have life forces and vitality to change people’s lives,” she said. Lemler, a former nurse who lives in Oxnard, has been teaching classes in ikebana since 1982, and since that time, she said, she has witnessed a frequent phenomenon: Students come in feeling stressed and leave relaxed.

Lemler wrote a book in 1993 called “Transformation Through Flowers--Spiritual and Physical Healing.” In the book she describes an incident she said occurred in an elementary school in Japan, where ikebana arrangements had a positive effect on rowdy students.

At first the children just destroyed the flowers, she said, but eventually they became protective of them, and the atmosphere at the school gradually changed.

Another incident depicted in the book had a similar ending. Inmates of a Japanese women’s prison were given ikebana classes, which were later credited with helping to rehabilitate the women.

Lemler believes that the women eventually came to “regret their crimes.”

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A Utah women’s prison offered classes for a couple of years, and the families of inmates helped too, carrying in flowers for them to use, she said.

But in Los Angeles at a women’s prison, the idea fell flat. Lemler and others suggested to an administrator that a steady supply of arrangements, and even classes, would go a long way toward turning the women around and making the prison more hospitable.

“He laughed,” Lemler said.

That doesn’t stop her from pursuing the Sangetsu goal of distributing arrangements wherever there are people. She encourages her students to bring their artistry to their work sites or to give them to the ill. For months she brought an arrangement each week to an Oxnard psychiatric hospital.

She said a floral consciousness is gaining popularity. “You go to the farmers market and people are walking away with vegetables and flowers. There’s an awareness. They want to create beauty in the environment.”

DETAILS

* WHAT: Ikebana exhibit by the Sangetsu School of Flower Arranging.

* WHEN: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. Special demonstration at 2 p.m.

* WHERE: Mandalay Beach Resort, 2101 Mandalay Beach Road, Oxnard.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: 984-5325.