Tag Archives: nature as an inspiration

Let the Wild Be the Wild.

Wild swans at sunset.

From Top:
Pic#1 – photographed late 2015 and edited and shared on VSCO onDecember 05, 2017.
Pic#2 – photographed late 2015 and uploaded to my personal FB profile on December 18, 2017.
This post is being compiled on March 07, 2022.

How time flies.

Speaking of flying…
The swans fly in each year just as the real winter sets in, around mid to late December. They leave sometime in March, and when they do I will know. How do I know that?
They talk amongst each other as they head north flying right above my room, and perhaps because of their long neck working as a horn, their voice I can hear even with my windows closed, loud like trumpets although they fly quite high above. I find it adorably humorous, and subtly so if I smiled it would be too much.

The thing about the creatures of the wild – their independence – they are not of this society. And having to settle for just observing them from distance makes me feel the particular sense of longing…just like the creative kind of longing, reaching for the almost attainable, the longing, the reaching…

I don’t want to taint this post with the latest in the local swan situation. Briefly though, the recent years’ swan feeding frenzy – with white bread of all things, seemed to have changed the wild creatures into a flock of domesticated animals, numbers doubled, waiting in shallows for next crumbs to fall on them.
(I posted a few more 2015 pics on VSCO also in 2017 – when I could still find humor in the situation. Links to the post 1 and 2.)

On a hopeful note…

While there the last time, I spotted about three swans floating away from the feeders and the flock, poised and elegant like they used to appear short 7yrs prior. White breads are like designer drug, refined, processed, chemical compounds made to lure you back into consuming more of them. Evidently they had enough power to override the natural instinct of the wild and winged, but not all were smitten, at least that afternoon. Us humans are a bit like that too.
So ironic tho, for some say the feeding brings out a sense of competition and aggressivity among swans. Again, a bit like us humans’ been thru… in any case.

Swans would make the perfect catalyst; after all they are the ones who know how to find the way.

Wild swan at sunset.

Published: March 08, 2022 at 02:08. Better get to bed.
Edited: March 09, 2022 – added a paragraph after “hopeful note” – doubling down on hope.

Creative Process, November 01, 2017.

A spider lily petal close up.

My kind of prayers.

Artist's hand and an art work.

The piece in progress: Spider Lily Red. A petal of the said lily (top), the muse, certainly posing like one, from late September this year, and my interpretation of it painted on silk, the reverse side of a dress in formation, pictured on the last day of October.
Stitches are done by hand, my homage to the God of Creativity whose benevolence and artistry I could never outdo.

Creative Process, April 22, 2017.

Artist's hands and artwork.

“Hope you get to see the cherries fall – have you?
There’s this one day all the trees decide to let go of the petals, it’s not the rain, or storm…but when this one day comes, often a very sunny day, they release their petals and fill the gray and busy Tokyo with swirling mass of pink confetti.”
– from an unsent letter, three springs ago.

Artist at work.

Photos: Spider Lily Red, in progress, pictured just yesterday.

The text is a repost from April 2014. Although the original post was deleted (it was not “dense” enough to stay – with each post I try to deliver something meaningful, personally and hopefully also somewhat universally.) I liked the text and every year I thought of it as the cherries fell. Because they fall, how they fall each year, as if the petals are held by micro hands that release the grip at the command inaudible to human ears, orchestrated in perfect timing optimal for the falling petals to dance midair.

I am also accumulating videos, of the blossoms, me painting, and other various scenes from spring I wish to put together at one point. For now though, I am focusing my effort on finishing the painting because.
Using dye is a delicate business. One must protect the budding piece from any moisture (e.g. sneezing, drooling..) and flying dye particles that become only visible once heat-set. It is best done in one sitting, in this case in one long sitting.

Thank you for your visit, enjoy your April.

Artist at work detail.

Abstraction in Nature, a Tribute.

September 1996, Los Angeles, north east San Fernando Valley, mildly Mexican* neighborhood. The flat expanse with wide, uncrowded streets evenly lit by dry desert sun.

The place I rented, a garage of a little house, a loft-like mini shelter for me and my canine friend Sophia, stood next to a rectangle swimming pool the landlady tirelessly cleaned. Separated by sort-of lawn was a main house, with two rooms for rent, both occupied.
The other end of mi mini casa was a neighbor’s yard, where serious mariachi parties took place thankfully not too often, complete with a set of super woofer speakers you’d find in night clubs. How I knew? I snuck a peek tiptoed over a sloppy stack of cinder blocks stood between me and the fiesta.

A wood carving and natural objects.

So, the place I rented. In one of the rooms in the main house, the one adjacent to the Mariachi’s, lived a petite lady, a tipsy intellectual. Told me she was a wine taster trained in France, in the kitchen we shared, in a stained XL tee, a stemmed glass in her hand, held as if she was standing under a chandelier.
Then suddenly one day she had a boyfriend. I recognized him from the 711 corner across the street, hanging with alert eyes, in business transactions, the back alley type of deal. From there things progressed rapidly and it was not long before I found him in our kitchen, a new resident in the honeymoon phase. Soon after I took refuge in a living room at my friend’s nearby.

A wood carving and natural objects.

My friend, he lived on the Avenue Quiet only a few blocks from the Villa Mariachi, with his ailing wife and a lady who was there to help her out. Their generosity to welcome me in along with a rather large, wise but energetic dog into a full house is worth a mention, but it didn’t end there. He, a sculptor in hiatus, offered me the full use of his studio.
“You are an artist”, I wasn’t that convinced but he proclaimed anyways. “Artist makes art.”
That was the only string attached to the offer.

All his sculptures were made from wood, abstract with true substance. Used to exhibit, said he, did well for a long time. Something held me back from asking what changed all that.
The studio was originally, again, a garage. No light entered from the California sun but I could feel the heat. Tables, tools, wood scraps. Works half done, paused. All sat still gathering dust.

I was not certain of my ability to carve or to sustain my interest. Where is my fiesta? Besides, it was sunny outside. As I began to gather dust myself, a book, its title, caught my eye.
“Abstraction in Nature”
The three words made all the sense in the world. I knew exactly what they meant but had no idea until then it was something to write a book about. It was enough to get me started though.
Carve, sand, buffer. Shapes began to appear. As if there were ideas floating about waiting to be caught by the next available human.

A wood carving and natural objects.

I spent about a month and a half at the Sculptor’s, before moving over the hill to Hollywood, the place I so missed all the while I lived in the Valley. The milder sun and some fiestas, but most notably, walks on Sunset with ever proud Sophia strutting past girls in 7 inch heels working the Boulevard. Strangely though, now in 2017, I get just as excited google-earthing the Valley, if not more.

The things I absorbed in the Sculptor’s studio seemed to have gone dormant for a long while after that but looking back, I think, maybe that wasn’t so. You see, those things never really quit on you.
In fact, I have reasons to believe they had gone ahead and nurtured themselves while waiting, years of waiting, of dropping hints, nudging with intrigues, for this human and her next available moment.

A wood carving and natural objects.

I finished total of 8 pieces during my stay at the Sculptor’s, and got 3 more on pause. For this post I photographed four of them arranged with masterpieces made by someone else.

Lastly, I wrote this as a tribute, to my sculptor friend who’s passing I learned only several days ago, and to ‘Abstraction in Nature’ who definitely never quits, crystallizes into elements large and minuscule everything there is to life: the feast, the knife, and the whole enchilada.

Wood carvings and natural objects.

*In considering the current – as of March 2017 – trend of Mex bashing in U.S., I’d like to add:
“Colors” of the characters are intentionally unmentioned (hint: there are 4 in the post). I went to Angeles with no prior knowledge of Mexican culture, or how Chicanos (or Japanese for that matter) are positioned in the society. Mariachi blast landed on a blank canvas. Growing up in Japan I did not face discrimination based on color, nor do I have a strong inclination toward seeking my identity through the culture I was raised in, and that is where I am coming from, just an observer of the – our – human condition.

Abstraction in Nature, March 12, 2017.

A spider lily petal over sea.

We live on a Planet of Jewels.

Art work in progress detail.

A macro shot of a spider lily petal, and,
the first of the “Spider Lily Red” dresses, close detail of the front panel, almost there, how it looked this afternoon.

Last Edited: December 06, 2020.

Honey indeed.

Red spiderlilies and a black butterfly.

(Jizou: a Buddhist rock statue, its humble presence usually found on roadside, in a corner of a temple, as a requiem for departed, an aid for suffering.)

Red spider lilies and a rock statue.

Best jizous I’ve ever seen live in my neighborhood. Their stone-made presence weighs of the spirit. I sit and ponder on their shrine’s faded wooden verandah. So lucky, ain’t I. Then I glance over, their expression exudes. Surely honey, indeed, and that is quite so with everybody. Lucky, everyone, in ways no one else can know.

Carved, most probably by a monk on pilgrimage, he won it within himself, to let it speak through the simplest of lines. You ought to know simple is hard, creativity brutal, what you got inside, turns up regardless. That’s quite alright they say, they are the best jizous I’ve ever seen.

Red of the lilies around them somehow look the deepest. Someone who knew, once stood here. I think of the monk, the time he lived long since past, chiseling in bold, determined strikes, what he conveyed a timeless truth. Walking back to my car I find, in a bouquet of my favorite lilies, a glimpse of my own lucky bouncing in my arms.

Red spider lilies and Jizou rock statues.
Red spider lilies and a coffee cup.

All photos were taken on last Sunday of September 2016, at a location, best remain undisclosed, where I regularly raise a cup to our individual luckies.

Red spiderlilies and a mini frog.

Aqua Dragon Dye Test, 2006


Beach with large rocks.
A dragon painted on silk.

(yet another) Recap: a dye test for Aqua Dragon Dress (2006).
And a photo of a cool place near my house just yesterday, probably to be the last sunny day of August.