Suiseki Art

Forest - 2007; W 17 1/2″ x D 8 1/2″ x H 9″; Klamath river stone and poplar

Mas made this suiseki last autumn.  At the time he had such a feeling of accomplishment, finishing such a difficult daiza.  He brought it into the dining room and we enjoyed looking at it every day. But after a few days the excitement kind of disappeared.  It just couldn’t stand up next to the fine traditional suiseki in the room.

Mas been struggling with this stone for a long time.  It’s a beautiful piece of material from the Klamath River, but the feeling from the stone doesn’t transfer to the finished suiseki.  The peak is small and indistinct relative to the vertical and horizontal expanse and there are many features spread out over the surface.  It feels like a big wall, too busy and with no focal point.

A suiseki friend was visiting a while ago, and he suggested that Mas cut the stone and make a simple base.  Of course this he had considered this possibility.  It would solve the vertical wall problem, and would also help give the stone better proportions - a distinct peak and good kamae (good seat or posture).  But cutting is a last resort, and Mas always wants to explore all the other possibilities. He feels that it is an incredible stone, even though it does not follow the traditional suiseki style.  So what to do?  He really wants to “take care” of the stone - and show the deep meaning of stone appreciation.

The other night Mas showed me a picture of his first attempt to finish this stone from several years ago.  

Wave  - 2000; W 24″ x D 12″ x H 11″; Stone, Douglas Fir with paint

This was one of his very early experiments with using a board for his “suiseki art”. The stone evokes the image of a great wave, and that reminded him of this print by Hokusai, so he carved and painted the board in a deliberate reference to the print.  The result was not satisfying to him. The board is too busy, competing with the stone, and the carving does not harmonize with the form of the stone. 

Nevertheless, I was kind of excited by the picture.  The stone, presented in this way, seems really powerful to me.  It gives me the image of a strong and ancient rock slowly being eroded away by the power of the sea.  Mas now feels encouraged to try again, and I look forward to someday being able to finish this story.  He says that if he simply concentrates how to create a “Wave”, without any preconceived concepts, then all the rest will follow.

As Hemingway once put it:

“No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in,” says Hemingway. “That kind of symbol sticks out like raisins in raisin bread. Raisin bread is all right, but plain bread is better.” He opens two bottles of beer and continues: “I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true.”

“Crater Lake”; W 5″ x D 4 1/4″ x H 3″; Eel River Stone with walnut base

Many years ago my mother and I took a road trip around Northern California and Oregon. We started out going north on Highway 101 from San Francisco, in order to visit the redwood forests of California’s North Coast. These are wet, mysterious places where trees soar to incredible heights; their carcasses lie on the forest floor rotting slowly in the moist air. In both life and death the trees offer sustenance to all the life around them.

After joining the Pacific coast, the highway hugs the shoreline through Oregon and beyond to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. The coast of Oregon is a wild and beautiful place, with great rocks battered by the sea. We stopped in Gold’s Beach to enjoy a short raft trip on the Rogue River, which pours down out of the Klamath mountains, and then continued up the coast of Oregon until we decided to turn inland. We wanted to go see Crater Lake.

In the short 100 miles from the coast to Crater lake you pass through many different environments. Leaving the seashore behind, you go over lush coastal mountains full of Douglas Fir and Port Orford Cedar, interspersed with picturesque dairy farms. From there you drive through the rich, fertile farmland of the Willamette Valley and start the climb into the high country of the Cascade mountains.

Crater Lake was formed in the caldera left behind after an ancient volcano, Mt. Mazama, collapsed more than 7500 years ago. The rim is at an elevation of about 7000 ft, and is 1000 feet above the surface of the lake. (At its deepest point, the lake itself is nearly 2000 feet deep.) Since the collapse of Mt. Mazama, small eruptions inside the caldera have formed some cinder cone islands. Crater Lake is an amazing, mystical place and it is no wonder that it continues to be a sacred site for the local Native American Klamath Tribe.

Crater Lake; Photo by Mas Nakajima; July 2, 2005

Not too long after this trip I went with some friends for tanseki to the Eel River. I remember climbing down the long steep rock wall to the river below. Just as we were about to leave I found this tamari (water pool stone) lying face up on the ground, seemingly waiting for me to find it.

It’s a very hard stone, made of a deep beautiful black mineral - perhaps jasper. It looks a bit like an egg that has broken open. The wide snow-dusted rim around the deep lake, with the island near the shore, makes it the image of Crater Lake.

When Mas first visited my house he immediately spotted this stone outside on the bonsai bench. He says that for him the stone shows the beauty of simplicity and purity, which is the essence of suiseki. He made the daiza as one of his first gifts to me. Mas says that for Japanese people a tamari does not just represent a water pool, but also brings good fortune for your life.

Whenever I look at this stone I remember the day on the river with my friends, I think about the trip I shared with my mother, and I feel the richness of my life.

“Winter Blue”; 2008; 48″ x 24″; Oil paint on wood board

The next show at the Triangle Gallery, Time Will Tell, will run April 15-May 31 and includes selected artwork from Gallery Artists. Mas will exhibit two paintings and one suiseki art sculpture. (You can click on the photo to see a slideshow of all three pieces).

These past few months have been kind of exciting for me. Mas has been making some real advances in his technique and style with spray paint on wood, and it seems like almost every day there’s a new painting to study and critique. Winter Blue is one of my favorites. I look at it every morning while I drink my tea.

Mas and I found this stone on our first date, a collecting trip to Black Butte Reservoir in Northern California. It was Thanksgiving weekend in 2004 and the weather was ice cold and with a strong north wind blowing. The stone has several significant features, including the amazing autumn colors, the large tamari or waterpool, and the steep cliff recessed under a big overhang. By contrast, the surface features, including the two small peaks to either side of the tamari, are more restrained and gentle.

Soon after bringing it home, Mas made a daiza. Sometimes when so many interesting features are present the viewer’s eye gets lost. Simplicity is one of the most important aesthetic virtues for a suiseki. Mas wanted to simplify the stone by emphasizing the tamari and surface features. This gives the suiseki a modest, settled feeling. We kept the suiseki in the living room and enjoyed our memories of that day.

Recently, Mas took the stone out of the daiza and put it on the table. He didn’t have any intention of redoing it, but while looking at the stone he started appreciating the cliff area. He thought it enhanced the stone rather than detracting so he decided to open up the front of the daiza to reveal this unique feature.

It seems to me that he has revealed the heart of the stone. Its features combine in a dynamic harmony, and the recessed cliff gives a sense of depth and mystery. Removing the wall of wood from the front also allows the eye to appreciate the subtle movements of the stone surface, and perhaps creates more room for the viewer’s imagination.

Untitled; W 10″ x H 4″ x D 7 1/2″; Jasper and Black Walnut

The central feature of a suiseki art piece is a found object - a stone - that has been shaped entirely by Nature. So it’s understandable that, whenever suiseki lovers get together, the conversation almost always gets around to the issue of whether or not it is okay to cut a stone when making a suiseki.

There are different teachings and practices both here in the U.S. and in Japan (and much argument in both places). In my view it’s really an artistic decision rather than a matter of “okay” or “not okay”.

Some people come at the cutting issue from a conceptual point of view - they often express the feeling that cutting a stone damages the spirit of the stone. (Many people use the Japanese term kami, but the ancient Greek concept of a nymph probably serves just as well.) This is certainly in keeping with the historical roots of suiseki as objects which brought Nature indoors for Zen meditation and the Tea Ceremony. Suiban display is commonly used to express this feeling.

Other people are more concerned with the suiseki as a visual object. In this view, the artistic composition - the line, form, and visual balance - is the primary concern. For this group, it is acceptable to cut a stone if it improves the artistic composition - provided that it results in a good suiseki. Suiseki is treated more as Art in our modern sense, rather than seeing it through the lens of traditional spiritual belief. (See my earlier post on that topic.)

Neither point of view is “right” or “wrong”, and they aren’t even mutually exclusive. Some people emphasize the conceptual - and may be more forgiving of compositional “flaws” in uncut stones. The other group emphasizes the composition and is more forgiving of the human intrusion of cutting.

Here in Northern California, most people seem to follow the same practice as the Nippon Suiseki Association (see their FAQ here). We consider stone cutting to be acceptable - though good un-cut stones are more valued. There is however one significant difference between our practice and the Japanese practice.

For aesthetic reasons, the Japanese artists use various techniques (such as sandblasting) to modify the bottom face and edges of a cut stone so as to conceal the smooth face. In some cases additional work may even be done on the visible parts of the stone to modify the shape. This work is usually done very skillfully and is difficult to detect. (In the commercial world of course the seller should disclose this to you. I have a couple of Japanese suiseki, and I only found out later that they had been modified. However, they are beautiful stones and I enjoy them both.)

By contrast, our Northern California practice is to grind the sharp edges in order to make a good transition into the daiza, and no attempt is made to conceal the cut face itself. I am not aware of any Northern California artists (or commercial dealers) that make a practice of modifying the visible shape and people consider it to be improper and not part of the suiseki aesthetic.

Mas feels that the decision depends on the individual stone and what it needs. He will cut a stone, but only when the resulting suiseki will be very good.

Late Fall (shown in the photo below) is an fine example of a cut-stone suiseki. It is a classic mountain-shaped stone (山形 yamagata) that meets all the requirements of the rule of three-sides (三面の法 sanmen-no-hou). It has good asymmetrical balance, a well-defined straight peak, and the peak and both ends all come slightly forward towards the viewer (what is called good kamae 構). The stone material is good well-weathered serpentine, with a subdued deep brown color and interesting textures that enhance the lines of the stone, and is starting to show age and patina. This suiseki is currently in our entry way, and I enjoy seeing it every time I walk through.

“Late Fall”; W 16″ x D 7″ x H 6″; Clear Creek serpentine

We held the Bay Island Bonsai 9th annual exhibit this past weekend, and for the third year in a row Mas was a guest exhibitor. Boon gives him free rein to do whatever he wants, so last year he made an entirely contemporary display with his Suiseki Art piece “Akebono”. This year Mas chose to combine a very traditional suiban display with one of his recent paintings. After creating the display, he titled it “Silence” (静寂 seijaku).

When we were creating this display Mas first tried a more traditional approach, using a calligraphy scroll that his mother had given us. The scroll has the character 然 (zen) which comes from the word shizen, or “nature”. It didn’t look good - the calligraphy was very strong and overpowered the stone, stealing all the attention. On top of that, the meaning of calligraphy is an essential part of it - you aren’t using it just for its visual appearance. Something essential is lost if the great majority of viewers don’t know the meaning.

So we started looking at some of Mas’ recent paintings from last summer. This painting was not made with any intention of displaying it with a suiseki, but when we tried it with this stone and suiban we realized how well they complemented each other.

Mas deliberately avoided giving a descriptive name or label to either the stone or painting . Having a description such as “coastal rock” or “waterpool” limits the viewer’s own imagination. For me, this display is a memory of morning on the Klamath river, surrounded by forest, with the mist rising off the water. For a fellow BIB member (of more practical bent perhaps) the painting seemed like a micrograph of the stone itself.

Having a suiseki display among bonsai gives a moment’s rest while going though the exhibit. In the midst of the trees is a quiet clearing where you can gather your thoughts and go on refreshed.

The San Francisco Asian Art Museum is hosting a suiseki exhibit, put on by the California Suiseki Socity, as part of its AsiaAlive program (it will run through November 25, 2007). Mas and our friend Hideko Metaxas were asked to participate.

Hideko joined San Francisco Suiseki Kai when it was founded in 1981. She travels around the world lecturing on the display of the Japanese arts or bonsai, suiseki, and ikebana.

To accompany the suiseki exhibit Hideko created a formal display using, Mas’ Fuji-san suiseki, in the tokonoma of the museum’s tea room. The antique scroll and incense burner are from her collection.

“Nature”; W 10 1/2″ x D 5 3/4″ x H 6″;Serpentine from Clear Creek

A good suiseki combines human art and craft with nature to make a harmonious whole.

At the time Mas found this stone - in the mid-1990s - he didn’t know what to do with it. It has good color and shape for suiseki, but the corners at the sides are missing and there is a sharp undercut on the back. Also, if you evaluate it based on san-men-no-hou (the rule of three dimensions), the proportions are wrong - it’s too high for it’s width.

In the traditional northern California form, the daiza rim makes a straight line across the stone. The emphasis is on showing the natural stone and the human-created element is minimized. For many stones I think this is a very beautiful way to display them (in particular stones that have a balanced harmony that makes for a quiet, elegant feeling). However, very few stones have the kind of proportions and flat bottom that allow them to be finished without alteration. In most cases, you either have to cut the stone, or carve a daiza that is too deep for the stone’s proportions (unless it’s that rare stone with a fairly flat bottom and near-perfect shape). To finish “Nature” in this manner would require cutting the stone at the line shown - and Mas felt that it would lose its movement and excitement. Cutting a stone is always an option, but should only be done if it will improve the stone’s balance and harmony and result in a much better suiseki.

To solve the problem, Mas tried to carve a base that would complete the imperfect areas instead of hide them. In this way, the human element - the carved daiza - becomes an integral part of the composition. This requires the artist to find a balance between following nature and imposing a human vision. To be successful, it is necessary to observe nature - the stone and the wood - carefully and use artistic judgment to match the movement of the stone with the flow of the wood grain.

Shortly after completing this suiseki, he found this piece of driftwood at the Eel River. The similarity between the form of the driftwood and that of the daiza is sort of uncanny. Mas feels that by studying natural objects such as this driftwood you can get some valuable lessons for your life. He says he has learned from suiseki that “Nature is not perfect. I am way imperfect, so how can I expect other people to be perfect?”.

This weekend (8/4-8/5) is the 26th exhibit for San Francisco Suiseki Kai. It is held in the hospitality room kindly provided by Union Bank in Japan Center. This year Mas and I will show three stones. Also, we are part of the “toban” group for the show this year, which means being responsible for tea and snacks for the members. Mas has been packing up all the stones, and making sure we have the right ji-ita for each one, while I’ve been getting these photos ready for posting. Then off to do our shopping and then to the city.

Meanwhile, we just got back from Lassen National Park. The stone there is volcanic, and pretty fresh at that - as such it is not suitable for suiseki (and anyway, it’s a National Park, which means look but don’t touch !). But anyone who loves stone and loves the mountains should visit Lassen. It is truly a national treasure.

After the weekend, I can catch up with regular life, and maybe even post the next article. It is a continuation of the creative daiza series, and explores some thoughts about how nature can inspire you in making daiza and presenting suiseki.

Click the picture to see the stones we are showing.

-Janet Roth

Mas found this stone in the early 1990’s on the Eel River. It was getting dark at the end of a long day of tanseki (stone collecting). He was getting ready to go home when he saw the little red peak sticking up above the sand. He tried to move it with his crowbar, with no particular expectation of anything.

Usually when you try to move a buried stone you find you can’t - the hidden part is too big or it’s stuck under other large rocks. Then, if you can dig it up, it turns out to have no shape or some other big problem. But this stone came out very easily, and when he picked up the stone to look at it he just said “ワオー” (Wow!). It was such an incredibly beautiful stone, he says he couldn’t believe it. The deep red jasper mountain range rising up behind the lake in the long valley gave him such a peaceful feeling. If you’ve been on tanseki, perhaps you know that feeling of joy and excitement; Mas likens it to finding some precious jewel.

He made a daiza for this stone following the traditional style taught by California (and also Japanese) suiseki artists. A seat is carved into the wood to hold the base of the stone (this stone has not been cut, so the base is not flat), small uniform legs are made under the major visual masses, and the rim is flat all the way around. In this style, the daiza acts as a simple platform for the stone. The legs show just enough to visually support the weight of the stone, but otherwise are intended to almost disappear from the normal viewing angle (which is looking down slightly on the stone). The idea is to show the stone, the daiza itself is not considered important.

At about this same time Mas was starting to develop his fine art sculpture (what he calls his “suiseki art”). As his eye and sensitivity to the stone developed, he became dissatisfied with this suiseki. He was also paying attention to the contemporary daiza being shown in the Japanese suiseki magazines. The flat daiza does not complement the movement and feeling of the stone, and the stone and base don’t integrate - simply put, it’s not beautiful. So, he carved a new daiza paying careful attention to the movement of the stone. The aim is to take two beautiful objects - a stone from nature and a daiza carved by the artist - and marry them to create the finished piece. The stone itself is just a stone. The daiza by itself is just wood carving. Together they make art, a suiseki.

The fine art sculpture and the traditional suiseki are never in conflict for him, but are aspects of the same thing. His art is grounded in the practice of suiseki, and he constantly comes back to making suiseki to refresh himself.

To me, this stone comes to life when cradled in the daiza - the curves in the rim bring out the movement and feeling of the stone. But note also the legs - they are larger than the traditional legs, and are not uniform. Each leg is made so as to echo and balance lines in the stone and thereby complement it. Instead of disappearing due to small size, the legs visually merge with, and help complete, the composition. Mas says that this suiseki was the first step towards achieving his dream of suiseki becoming fine art.

“Peace”; W 16″ x D 7″ x H 6″; Jasper and Genuine Mahogany

Back View