SOLASTALGIA: Walking + drawing on the Kumano Kodō
Smaller, early works testing the process, Kintsugi - Memory of a Moment, Denchu Hirakushi House and Atelier, 2020
I don’t know if I have ever been anywhere more beautiful than the Kumano Kodō; the ancient road that links sacred sites and pilgrimage routes in the Kii Mountain Ranges in the Kansai region of Japan. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and felt like I knew it long before I arrived - finally starting to walk its network of paths in the spring, again in the summer - and will return for autumn and winter.
This yearlong thread pulling me to this place was born of the sensory losses that came out of 2021, and a desire to be more closely woven into the nature of a place. No practice does this better than walking, and I love the way that the action of walking becomes a form of drawing, whilst passing through time and space.
When I’m not in Wakayama, I think about those solitary, sensation-saturated walks as I make ceramics in my studio. These are human-sized ceramics, that require a full body physicality to form - it’s basically a hug - and to make the works I lean into those soil and mineral compounds drawn from the land, negotiating their plasticity into sculptural forms. Because they are big, too big for any kiln I have access to, and because I am OK with things breaking these days, when they start to break I surrender, and gather up the pieces. Then I fire these broken pieces, and whilst guarding the kiln’s climbing heat and pressure that will transform the fragile clay to stone once it hits 1200 degrees, I think of the mountains, and how they too were born of these elemental forces.
Once cooled, I piece the once tesselating pieces back together into their new form, using kintsugi techniques; mugi urushi, kokoso, sabi and layer upon layer of urushi lacquer. Gaps are formed by the shape-shifting antics of clay in kiln, and new lines and landscapes are formed.
Lastly, I make lacquer paintings of these lines of repair, unwrapping them from their 3-dimensional origins and laying them flat on washi paper. These lines look like pathways on a map. Bringing me back to where I began.
Ceramic, Creator Sculpture Series Vol. 7, Art Complex Centre Tokyo, 2020
Ceramics and Lacquer Drawing, Creator Sculpture Series Vol. 7, Art Complex Centre Tokyo, 2020