April 21, 2004
Zen Stitching
"I now interpret artistic inspiration, often understood in terms of unexplainable impulses and images (as I previously thought), in a more mundane but just as profound fashion: inspiration means, simply and literally, to breathe in." - a quote from an article by Akiko Kotani in Fiberarts Magazine (2001) entitled, A Zen Retreat on Fibers and Drawing.
Kotani's work is minimal. Through her writings, we receive some insight as to the wellspring of her purist aesthetic. She writes about the activities during the days that she spent on retreat at the monastery. But her deepest discovery came later, when she returned home and began to integrate her learning into her teaching and art. The thought of a Zen master that can grab an arrow in flight is an inspiration to most little boys. Being a Zen master who is fully embedded in each stitch sounds pretty enticing too.
image: Akiko Kotani, Deep Winter #5-10, 2000
Posted by sfenton at April 21, 2004 09:37 PMThanks, Serena, for directing me to this article. I'm fascinated. She makes the work I do seem messy and overblown. June
Posted by: June at April 21, 2004 11:10 PMI agree. I am not sure that I am ready for minimal yet, but this has made me intrigued by the notion of Zen drawing - especially the books by Frederick Franck (Zen of Seeing : Seeing/Drawing as Meditation
is one). I noticed at Amazon that Franck has several decidedly Western ("Seeing Venice: An Eye in Love: An Inner Travelogue With 94 Drawings" or "A Passion for Seeing: On Being an Image Maker"), but they all seem to have the same simplicity
