When I was growing up I spent a lot of time looking through Ikebana by Senei Ikenobō. Ikebana is the Japanese practice of flower arranging, considered one of the Zen arts alongside calligraphy and tea ceremony. Ikebana is a meditative practice and the arranger, through the selection of organic materials, the container or vessel, and arrangement of the components, contemplates nature, the changing seasons and the transience of life. Flipping through my little ikebana book, even today, what I notice is that I’m drawn as much to the pottery as the floral combinations. These two elements coming together—the container and the contained—activates a third, unexpected element. Juxtaposition figures into my everyday thinking and my visual art practice. 

Natalie Purschwitz is an artist and designer living and working on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ First Nations, also known as Vancouver. Her research draws on modes of making that include collecting, accumulating, arranging, editing, and writing. She is curious about the ways that landscapes are shaped by humans and nonhumans, through systems of organization, networks of support, and ruptures within these systems. By reconfiguring everyday objects and elemental substances, Purschwitz creates conditions for material events. Natalie grew up in a small town in the Canadian Rockies.