flower salad

I try to get the Etegami Fun Club involved in the Flower City Fukushima Etegami Contest every year. We've produced at least two award-winners so far, although I do recognize that the Japanese judges probably give our entries special consideration because of the novelty of submissions from "foreign lands."

But the Etegami Fun Club is much larger now than it was a few years ago, and this year, members from Italy, France, Canada, the US, Poland, Belarus, (and more) came up with an unprecedented number of submissions. So many, in fact, that submissions from foreigners may soon become so blasé that it will be much more difficult to impress the judges. That, of course, is a good thing. It's further proof that years of effort to spread interest in and passion about the art of etegami has produced results.

The two etegami shown here are from my on-going Flower Salad series. The one at the top is my submission to this year's Flower City Fukushima call. It says "Let's eat flower salad and become beautiful." In Japanese, the word for "beautiful" (kirei) can also mean "clean, pure, pristine" much like the English word when used in a sentence like "What a beautiful day it is!" It is more than physical beauty; it can refer to the spirit or character and, most definitely, the heart.