Azuma Makoto

Few aspiring musicians suddenly make the switch from grunge rock to garde­nias, but at the tender age of 21, Azuma Makoto stopped playing guitar for his Fukuoka-based band and moved to Tokyo to explore the possibilities of artistic self-expression in flower arrangement.

Now at age 29, with exhibitions at Issey Miyake’s Tribeca store and collaborations with Sony and Colette, Azuma is forging an innovative new bond between botany and art.

Azuma’s obsession with flowers started early: “Flowers are very ephemeral, and as a kid, I was always fond of fleeting things. I liked how the shape would not remain the same over time,” he says. Upon his arrival in Tokyo with no formal back ground in ikebana, Azuma put in two years of back-breaking labor at a supermarket flower stand, learning the ropes by making bouquets for neighborhood housewives. In 2001 he opened his own boutique, Jardins des Fleurs, to serve a more exclusive clientele in Tokyo’s posh Ginza district.

“I don’t make ‘things,’ but works of art. Each one is different. I can’t make the same thing twice.” - Azuma Makoto

The most striking thing about Azuma’s white basement shop is the complete lack of flowers: “If you have the flowers sitting there in the store, the customers will say, oh, add that one please. My concept is ‘order-made’ from zero. I take the order from the customer—theme, coloring—and then I go get the flowers myself, make, and finally present the work.” Azuma mostly finds his floral supplies at Tokyo’s big flower wholesalers, but also makes the occasional mountain expedition for rare wildflowers. In his off-hours, he is always chasing the cutting-edge: chatting with formal botanists and attempting various semi-scientific experiments, like growing flowers in con crete.

Azuma’s daily work may entail the creation of congratulatory bouquets and uptown party decorations, but he brings a certain artistic perspective to his output. He explained, “I don’t make ‘things,’ but works of art. Each one is different. I can’t make the same thing twice.” His flower baskets are often densely-arranged pieces with bold, monochromatic palettes, almost as if pulled from the color scheme to Nirvana’s video for “Heart Shaped Box.”

Lately, his gallery work has found a whole host of prestigious homes. At Issey Miyake’s Tribeca store last Fall, Azuma exhibited his “Shiki” series featuring the severed top of a pine tree suspended by wires within a gi ant cubic frame. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the aesthetic taste emerging from these works veers to wards traditional Japanese spatial relations. “My work is very minimal, simple. Also, ma [interval, room] is very important for me. It’s not just about the work itself but the air and space around it.” Azuma also undertakes vari ous photographic series, placing plants, fruits, and flow ers next to naked bodies and concrete slabs.

Next on Azuma’s to-do list is an exhibition tour of Europe, where he will make his pieces exclusively from the local flora. He beams about the possibilities of over seas presentation: “Japan is still relatively stiff. Even if I hold an exhibition, there’s no reaction. In New York or abroad, the regular customers ‘get’ my art.” Azuma has also started to create his own line of glass vases. He blows the glass himself for each prototype and then gives the oddly-shaped white containers names based on musical genres—“punk,” “opera,” and “rock,” for example. Most are intentionally cracked and irregular pieces—one looks like a stylized version of a plastic drinking straw peeled apart by a six-year-old.

None of the local success nor international prestige has bred self-aggrandizing or pretension, however. He still radiates an honest passion and giddy enthusiasm for his floral creations and continues to put together his ar­rangements while listening to old Fugazi records. Azuma Makoto today may have already reinvented the meaning of “Flower Power,” but his potential and dedication question whether we have yet to see the artist in full bloom.