A Guide to the Best of Southern California : DESIGN : Heavens and Earth
“Bring your Earth down a bit, just so. There. You see?” Flo Asao, a MOA flower-arranging instructor, improves a student’s effort, bending an iris closer to a branch of variegated euonymus. The students come bearing pails and shears, each concentrating on her own arrangement: One, a first-timer, tucks an upright myrtle branch into the wire “frog,” or stem gripper. Two regular attendees struggle with the proper relationships in a tall-vase display, while the fourth grapples with a leaning tower of greenery--one that threatens to topple.
“It’s like therapy,” says student Fujiko Yamashita. “One of the best parts is handling the materials; that’s something you can’t get from books.”
MOA, short for Mokichi Okada International Organization, teaches the art of incorporating foliage and flowers in three distinct elements--sun, moon and Earth--in prescribed triangular relationships: The sun is positioned highest, then the moon, then, lowest and smallest, the planet.
Besides flower arranging ($150), MOA offers classes in Japanese ceramics ($370) and language ($150 to $200). Schedules are now available for classes starting in January.
Mokichi Okada International Organization, 8554 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles; (213) 657-7200.
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