Punk Ikebana
About Punk Ikebana
In its gloriously luxe pages, PUNK IKEBANA deconstructs our modern perceptions of floral design. Louesa carefully weaves a new narrative, foraging and gleaning flora from California's always-evolving landscapes. Her arrangements and installations unite the cultural wisdom and elegance of the Japanese perspective with California’s exhilarating freedom from convention. Aligning her deep commitment to the environment with her love of foraging, gleaning, and sourcing locally, Louesa offers this very simple mantra: if you only forage, glean, or source local and micro-seasonal flora, you’ll have a perfectly symbiotic and harmonious practice, one that is intrinsically whole and abundant, full of more yeses than nos.
“In the capable hands and through the honest, piercing, and loving eyes of flora-adorer Louesa Roebuck, the very contradictory contours of our humanity are offered to us in word, deed, and mercurial photography by Ian Hughes in Punk Ikebana, Louesa’s newest, tenderest offering to the world.”
“Punk Ikebana, it’s life with death, friend. It’s about a place and a time. A moment, but also the where of it all. How it all fits together. Where does nature end? Elevations. Levels to it. The horror of it all. Complete splendor. The dark. You ever meet someone who can just touch something, move things, arrange, make it right? It’s rare, and you hold it in your hands.”
Ian Hughes is a British-born photographer, art director, and craftsman. He lives in Ojai, California. ianhughes.com
Obi Kaufmann is an American naturalist, writer, poet, and illustrator. He is the author of The California Field Atlas, an illustrated guide to the state's ecology and geography, which was on the San Francisco Chronicle's bestseller list and won a gold medal at the California Book Awards, as well as the NCIBA Book of the Year award. Kaufmann is an avid environmentalist, winning the 2019 Mark Dubois River Protection Award for his efforts, and is on the Board of Directors of the California Wilderness Coalition. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Cameron Books is a boutique publishing company in Petaluma, CA and an imprint of Abrams.