all photos courtesy PingMag | click to enlarge
Yuji Ueno is a “budding” flower arrangement artist, known in Japanese as kadoka. But you won’t find Ueno’s work on a typical display table, or behind glass. Known as somewhat of an experimental punk in his field, Ueno has taken the traditional art of flower arrangement, quite literally, out into the streets.
His latest creation is “Frontier Car,” an arrangement of vegetation and scrap wood collected from the mountains of a rural village that, from afar, could easily be mistaken as an oversized Christmas tree being carried home from the field. But this is the middle of summer. And, when given a closer look, it’s immediately clear that the human hand has been at work, carefully creating a symmetrical work of art in the shape of a boat.
PingMag recently spoke with the artist, who explained that “there was no better way to tell the world about the wonders of Ikebana” than to strap it to the hood of his car and drive around.
There’s even space to climb inside!
