It is with a sad heart that the members of the Ikebana International Rochester Chapter 53 announce the passing of Ms. Jo Ellen Budnick. She had been a member of Ikebana International for many years. With her living in the Buffalo, NY area, she was also a member of the Buffalo chapter when it was active. However, with the Buffalo chapter closing, she started coming to and became a member of the Rochester chapter.
Ms. Budnick was exceptional in that she had certificates in two ikebana schools–the Chiko School of Ikebana and the Ohara School of Ikebana.
Even though she had certificates in both schools, most of her arrangements within the Rochester Chapter were Chiko.
As one can tell from these pictures, the Chiko Ikebana practitioner needs to develop skills to work not only with flowers, but a shikimono (the board on which the arrangement sits), and non-living materials such as figurines and sand.
The Chiko School of Ikebana is not a common school. With Ms. Budnick being the only Chiko teacher in our chapter, a plan was set up for her to be interviewed on video.
But, unfortunately, just before her video interview was to take place during our chapter’s 60th anniversary, she became ill and was not able to make it back to our chapter to fulfill those plans.
The goal of the video interview was to have a visual historical record for some of the lesser known and smaller schools which are suffering a reduction in their numbers of practitioners.
Unfortunately, we were not able to fulfill that promise and sadly may permanently suffer the loss of this school’s representation in our Ikebana International Chapter.