Sakura Orihon Receives Honor Award for Communications

Sakura Orihon, the exhibition of Ron Henderson’s cherry blossom sketchbooks at the United States National Arboretum, has been recognized with the Honor Award for Communications from the American Society of Landscape Architects, Rhode Island Chapter.

Fifteen orihon (ori=folding, hon=book) accordion-fold sketchbooks from the Henderson’s National Endowment of the Arts / Japan-US Friendship Commission Fellowship in Japan were the subject of a solo exhibition at the US National Arboretum in the Springs of 2018 and 2019. The exhibition will be installed again from February - April 2022. Following the cherry blossoms from south to north, the landscape architect recorded pilgrimages to famous venerable trees and documented horticultural practices (branch crutching, rope tenting, etc.) that embody the culture of cherry trees in Japan. The landscape architect has been drawing in orihon sketchbooks since 1994. The format of these sketchbooks allows extended horizontal drawings that are particularly valuable for landscapes, maps, diagrams of linear travel paths, and experiential sequences.

Henderson was invited by the Director of the United States National Arboretum to exhibit the sketchbooks as the Arboretum's contribution to the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. -- a festival celebrating Japan's 1912 donation of the Tidal Basin cherry trees and organized by representatives of business, civic, and governmental organizations that welcomes more than 700,000 people each year to admire and study the historic cherry trees -- whose blossoms herald the beginning of spring in the nation's capital. The exhibition was held at the Arboretum in the galleries of the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum which welcomed approximately 30,000 visitors during each run of the Sakura Orihon exhibition.

The Sakura Orihon exhibition was comprised of five custom mahogany and glass vitrines designed by the landscape architect to display and secure the sketchbooks, 49 printed and mounted panels at 30" x 40" in an upright folded configuration, and 2 wooden stamps for visitors to print commemorative cherry blossom images on handmade washi paper. The exhibit is structured around three narratives: cherry blossom culture, notable Japanese cherry trees, and Japanese horticulture techniques.