Homage to Suizenji 1991-2015


Click on image to view gallery


Click on image to view gallery

This site-specific floating ceramic sculpture installation was among the works featured in the invitational Waterways Exhibition at the Bremer Farm, Otego, NY. The sculpture was composed of 27 black luster-glazed disks installed in three separate, odd numbered groupings of five, nine and eleven. Within each group, there was one or more odd numbered disks banded with golden bull's eyes. The gold and black bull's eye disks were central to each of the three groupings, with the center orb of each forming a physical and metaphorical focal point. Although the disks were anchored with a nylon tether and lead weight, the concentric circles of the bull's eyes and their subtle movement on the water enhanced the quality of motion.

These relatively small disks floating in the pond were a conceptual response to the beautiful Suizenji Jojuen Garden, one of Japan's most famous strolling landscape gardens, built the feudal lord Hosokawa in the 17th century. It is located in Kumamoto City by a freshwater pond fed by a hot spring, and landscaped in a circular pattern for strolling around a miniature Mt. Fuji. In my garden, the articulation of the discrete elements within the field and the sense of the field as a whole emerged (sequentially) only by walking and looking, which are the same principles of time, space and motion in effect at Suizenji.

The floating black and gold bull’s-eye ceramic disks, Homage to Suizenji have been re-installed indoors in three pools of water in galerie 103, Kukui'ula, Kaua'i, Hawai'i for the exhibition, "Roberta Griffith + Scott Groeniger," on view from October 10 to December 5, 2015. The Japanese concept of time, space, motion, and use of odd numbers remains similar.