Originally Posted by
Kotei
Thank you both.
Anne, yes, that's part of the garden, I am living with. I started creating the section on the pictures 5 years ago.
Maybe the garden itself would also fit into this prompt? Although there is no such thing as a Zen-garden, there is imho quite some Zen in Japanese (influenced) gardens.
To me, it is also expression and celebration of our union with nature.
It feels like our sense of beauty and being touched by it, developed in us, living as a part of nature.
"A sunny clearing, the woods in the back, a little river below, some stable rocks by my side" is not only beautiful and calming, but also the right place to rest and settle. Water, wood, food, shelter, overview... all present.
Beauty as a sense for automatically selecting the right surrounding for survival.
A Japanese garden seems to be exploring this connection.
Creating a blueprint of nature's forms and functions, that touch, soothe and activate a poetic state of mind.
Some traditional elements in Japanese Gardens are objects, created from natural materials.
Historical, aged building materials that continue existing and living a new life as a new object as part of the garden.
Joining nature and culture, showing time and age and transformation, death and birth, connecting past and present.
In Japan, these are often column parts used as stepping stones, old stone lanterns and such.
In this case, it's a basestone, that is a misfit leftover of some stones, I got from a stone quarry.
A sandstone sink from the demolition of an historical side building of a some hundred years old manor.
A display stone that I found expressing 'Mountain' in a nice way and some basalt gravel that I've had for another project (the display of a hollow tree trunk, I salvaged from a garden around the corner).
I played with the materials, I collected over the years and found the above fitting nicely together.
Some tripod, lever, chain-block work later, the material was close to it's final position.
I closed the sandstone sink's drain and filled it with sand, made a mixture of water, low-fat yoghurt, shredded moss and lichen and let it grow on the surface, the yoghurt being great nutrient solution.
The light/shade and water conditions determine which lichen and moss grow on it,
so this stinking 'aging' has to happen near the final display position.
I cleaned the surfaces, removed the sand, opened the drain, added the gravel and positioned the stones finally.
I am curious, how it will develop.
Someone (I think it was a suiseki collector) called suiseki the most basic, oldest kind of art.
Finding a stone that you find having a strong expression. Making a display that accents it. Displaying it unaltered.
Raising an object out of the emptiness, by pointing with the finger at it.
"Wow! look there!"
Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.