Ikebana is considered one of the three classical Japanese arts of refinement; an art form of arranging flowers, literally translating to ‘making flowers alive’ that dates to 794 CE. The art of flower arranging developed slowly in Japan with many schools, each teaching their own formal principles and rules of flower arranging, coming into existence at the end of the 15th century. Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436–1490), the greatest promoter of ikebana, contributed the concept that flowers offered on all ceremonial occasions, and placed as offerings before the gods, should not be offered loosely, but should represent time and thought.
As an artist with a reverence for design and visual beauty, I started working with plants creatively in 2017. After living as a vegetarian for over 25 years, one day I realized that I had never contemplated the plant world’s pervasiveness; how it is all around us, from the food on our tables to the linen of our tablecloths, from the cotton in our shirts to the threads that attach the soles of our shoes, the pages of our books, the frames around our art, from the arm of our chair and the floorboards of our home, to the wooden bowls in our cupboards and the cupboards themselves – even the money we spend for the salad we eat for dinner is made from plants. Over six thousand miles away from Japan, in Brooklyn, New York with a desire to honor and acknowledge the plant world, I naively started working as an outsider with no formal training in what I would later find out was the distinguished, centuries old tradition of ikebana.
– John Nickles
Lighting and furniture design, music composition, creative writing, sculpture and photography define the creative output of multi- disciplinary artist John Nickles. In his sculptural practice, which Nickles considers an outsider form of ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arrangement in accordance with set rules, the artist uses a highly curated selection of unconventional plant life and vessels to create moments of composed, unorthodox beauty. Compelled to preserve these curious and captivating assemblages, Nickles turned to photography and through this medium masterfully captures the essence of each iconographic object in spartan compositions brimming with the language of architecture and a whimsical converse functionality that plays with notions of monumentality versus the minimal, celebrity versus the infamous, and necessity versus the superfluous.
Nickles’ Plants in Danger series diverges from the Buddhist desire to preserve life that lies at the root of ikebana practice. The sculptures, made despite the knowledge the living specimens are unlikely to survive and serve merely as means to the photographic end, explore the longevity of the plant as secondary and by extension, expendable, foregrounding the question of morality and the role humans play in the life of plants. Visual haikus, meditations and lyrical moments come into being as mis- en-scenes of interchanging lush color studies that resonate in the subconscious. The artist eliminates all traditionally necessary components of keeping flora alive; a reflection on our relationship with, and possibly our inherent obligation to plants, unearthing our own empathic inclinations.
John Nickles (b. Brooklyn, NY, 1970) studied psychology, film, art and creative writing at Brooklyn College and design at the New York School of Interior Design, and, as a self-described iconoclast, holds a degree from neither. After a decade long career in the art supply industry, he entered the world of luxury home goods becoming one of the top salespeople for over a decade at Holly Hunt New York. He then returned to the world of art, founding his solo creative venture Brooklyn Ikebana in 2017 and in 2020 co-founding the thriving contemporary Cuban art gallery, Thomas Nickles Project, with his partner, Kristen Thomas which has presented to the United Nations and been critically reviewed in the New York Times.
His work has been exhibited at J-Collabo experimental art space in Brooklyn, New York, and Delbert-Arthur in New York City. He’s run the New York City marathon twice and lives in Brooklyn with his wife Kristen and their cat, Sylvie.