Paul Terrell
Rocks, Rivers, Raku

May 27 - June 18, 2022

A Visual Haiku

Wabi-Sabi; "Nothing is perfect, Nothing is complete, Nothing is permanent."

Form, Surface, Poetry.

"I embrace the serendipity of Raku fired ceramics, form and surface as rhythmic poetic ritual. Like a broken egg shell, “Naked Raku” has all of the final slips and glazes broken away. The results are contrasting black line drawings on white clay, defined by the random cracks in the glaze. Carved wood is incorporated additionally in these mixed-media pieces for contrast and a Zen like focal point. Making is Transcendent."

Rock Garden

A mindful journey,
Streaming thoughts like water flow.
Eddies guide the craft.

Seventeen Pieces, Three Verses, One Vision.

Seventeen is the number of syllables created in three stanzas of 5, 7, 5, to create a Haiku poem.

Five Naked Raku fired forms paying homage to the groupings of stones at Ryoan-Ji Zen Garden in Kyoto Japan are depicted as river stone reliefs.

Seven personally significant rivers are presented together. Rivers, like rocks, are a constant source of contemplation. The "raked sand" in Zen Gardens often becomes the metaphor for water, always moving and changing. I carved in wood seven rivers that I have personal relationships with, mounted on flat rectangular Raku-fired backgrounds, relating to the "Stone Garden" forms. Like the random carbon marking on the Naked Raku, whittled marks in cherry create a sense of frozen movement like the surface of a river, like the sand in a Zen garden.

Five Naked Raku works made from casts of raked textures from my Zen Garden. In "Stone Garden," an essay published in the Evergreen Review Vol. 4 in 1957, Will Petersen wrote; "Fifteen rocks – of various sizes and shapes… on a flat rectangular area of raked white sand, guides our mind into a purer meditation on the abstract relationship between emptiness and form." The rocks are metaphors for islands pushing up in bodies of water. I have never been to Ryoan-Ji, however I have created and maintain my own Zen Garden in collaboration with my late son John’s drawings.

"The object which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence…We make our discoveries while in the state because then we are clear-sighted." Robert Henri, Artist Educator

Paul Terrell (Buddy), Artist Educator