Wabi-Sabi

Limited Offer Japanese Works on Paper

wabi-sabi: an appreciation for beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. In traditional Japanese aesthetics, the acceptance of beauty in nature and in the transient, including principles that include asymmetry, roughness, economy, and simplicity.

going to Japan

At the beginning of the year, my father-in-law died very unexpectedly.
A quick flight to be with my mother-in-law was not possible, as they have lived in Japan for the last 20 or so years. This has been made increasingly complicated due to that nation’s travel restrictions, but another obvious reason it’s been so long since we’ve been to visit at all is that it’s costly to go and equally so to stay.
But if ever there were a time to make a trip to Japan happen, it was now.

Of all the things that would be both valuable and accessible, what if I made some new small pieces while we are in Japan?

And here they are.

Making this work while we were there was rather unrealistic. Time and focus and space weren’t part of the daily fare, but there was plenty of inspiration to pull from.

We quarantined in Tokyo for 5 days upon arrival— luckily the airbnb was what it claimed to be size-wise (not our experience on our return leg to Tokyo!) so we could adjust to the time difference and read books and play some dollar store board games we brought along.

Our sixth day there was our first day out, and we explored the width of the city from the Tokyo Tower, matcha lattes and walked streets lined with cherry blossoms. There were curvy pines in the walled gardens (we tried to find one open to the public but did not succeed), and the very next day caught a bus to Fuji.

Fuji was an along-the-way idea, as we hadn’t technically booked our entire stay in Japan ahead of time— which was stressful at the time, but worked out better than we could have planned.

We had a 3-day surprise snowfall and after exploring what surrounds Fuji for another week we went further south to Hamamatsu where Jose’s mom lives. (She had met us in Fuji so we had an extra week of “vacation” time together, and her away from home.)

The place we booked was a few train stops over from the downtown main city, but our apartment overlooked the Kakegawa castle and its’ accompanying gardens, which we paid the admission to climb to the top.

There is also a fabulous bird sanctuary in Kakegawa! Lilly pads covered large indoor ponds and exotic birds were everywhere. I took far too many pictures of birds.

In a month I didn’t get tired of Japanese food (it was so much fun to find local ingredients and practice recipes in the first weeks!)
We ate at the apartment half of the time and found onigiri at the corner markets and places out to eat the rest of the time. I’ve since added some cookbooks to my Amazon wishlist.

The final joy of the journey was choosing where to source the art materials on our return to Tokyo. We found our way to the Pigment Lab, and I came away with some bamboo paper, a couple of handmade brushes, and some iridescent watercolors… and a video.

All the pieces have particular homes where they are headed— it should be fun to see yours among the pairs created, some with the bamboo paper, all of them watercolor-bases and some with iridescent additions.
I really wanted these to hold together as its own small cohesive collection, and I think we managed to do just that.

Thanks so much for all your generous support of this project and this trip— what an encouragement and joy to send out these pieces!