The Identification and
Evolution of My Suiseki

What is a suiseki (or a viewing stone)? How are they meaningful? As an artistic tradition, how might they evolve? Below, I answer these questions in the context of my doing suiseki for the past 30 years. The history of suiseki in Japan parallels that of bonsai and Japanese gardens; these three, like much of the rest of Japanese culture including their language, were originally imported from China.

My two passions in the world are suiseki and my Japanese garden. Just a quick note regarding Japanese garden history—toward the end of the 15th century, Yoshimasa built the Silver Pavilion in Northwest Kyoto. This was a significant turning point in Japan's cultural history—for the first time, the Japanese garden found its meaning self-referentially, i.e., the garden no longer primarily referred to the nature that constituted its subject matter; rather, its meaning was derived from, or "about" itself. Similarly, early bonsai and suiseki referred to their respective subjects in nature—the miniature trees to their majestic counterparts in the forest; and the stones to their "life-sized" mountains. In the 16th century, this changed as did the Japanese gardens.

The following text will cover two areas: 1) The Nature of Suiseki (Viewing Stones); and 2) The Evolution of My Suiseki. Under "Nature," I will consider: Elements, Defeating Conditions and Aesthetics. Crucial for suiseki is its method of presentation—for my part, suiseki stone(s) are presented on a daiza, rather than in a suiban.

The Nature of Suiseki

Elements

The primary element of suiseki are—stones, which are—dark and hard, having a fairly restricted geology, with the appearance of "weathered age;" I clearly prefer uncut stones for philosophical reasons that need not concern us here; however using a cut a stone for "cause" may be acceptable (see #2; all stone references are to my web-site; "suiseki, recent works"). The second major element is the daiza (the wooden stand or base for the stone); this wood is generally of dark, exotic hard wood species. The daiza is tooled to accept the stone in a determined position; the daiza is raised above it resting surface; it is sanded and given a finish. This is not complicated—a suiseki is a stone on a board; at its basic sense, or existentially, the Zen of suiseki is found in sanding a board, its daiza.

The very process of listing the elements of suiseki suggests that exceptions to these elements need justification, e.g., using light colored and softer stones. In my suiseki evolution, this is precisely what I do. This reminds me—through my early years of suiseki, I was particularly fond of the stories of the revered Japanese masters rubbing their suiseki stones with the oil from the side of their nose for years to give the stone its magnificent patina. In order to shorten the necessary time frame that could amount to decades, I would fudge a bit and rub the stones with mineral oil; and regarding this past practice, I still remain guiltless. However, I no longer oil any of my stones; and while this is for other reasons, in hindsight, maybe the masters were correct—if this process is to work at all, one simply cannot take shortcuts.

Stones. The most important single element in suiseki is good, strong stones. This is a real challenge; but surely not to the extent that stone geology and acquisition be restricted to a particular continent, country or culture. This non-exclusion condition is essential in bringing suiseki into the 21st century and beyond its country of origin—Japan. There is no reason for the legitimacy of contemporary suiseki to remain exclusively in Japan. There is acceptable suiseki stone stock virtually every place in the world. However, this stock is not unlimited, e.g., the availability of good Murphys stones (from California) today is substantially reduced from what it was even a generation ago.

Regarding suiseki stone quality, we might suggest a two-stage level of quality— stones of minimal quality, and those of high quality. I might paraphrase what I said to my grandson some years ago - "You have to look at a hundred stones before you pick one up; and you have to pick up a hundred stones before you find one that you can use;" now this could be extended to, "you have to find a hundred that are usable before you get a good one." This is still insufficient— once one becomes serious, you have to go to the ends of the earth to secure descent stone stock. Because of the fact that in recent years, suiseki stock is becoming as difficult to get out of Japan as are bonsai, much of the good stone now comes from China. While suiseki collecting has endless things to recommend it, unfortunately it is far from the ideal method for securing top quality suiseki stock. One difficulty here is that "collecting" tends to perpetuate the myth that suiseki is about nothing but stones; in truth it is rather "about" the artistic piece that results from the stone presented on its diaza.

Wood. The second biggest challenge following the acquisition of good stones, is wood stock for the daiza. The most significant difference between the two is that, as of yet, great exotic wood stock remains available; the only liability is that it is expensive; and it is not always readily available. A good example of the latter is ebony—it is virtually gone, which makes its price at $60 a board foot, a bargain. I must admit, that I am hard pressed to articulate the phenomenal importance of the wood in the artistic quality of the finished suiseki work of art—suffice it to say that the stone, thus the suiseki work cannot be realized in the absence of the best possible wood. Let me identify some of my favorite wood species—Brazilian rosewood (and it varieties including coco bola), ebony, winge, old and exotic mahogany and teak. One of the few American wood species that can hold its on in this class of woods is walnut, which resonates with me from my childhood. Light wood species (in color and density) are more difficult to justify than are selecting light colored stones.

I should say a word regarding using exotic wood species which may be endangered. Obviously, one's moral compass must be the guide here. While I realize the weakness of the argument, I take some solace in the facts that I use so little and that it is put to an artistic end. I feel almost apologetic for even making such a weak attempt here. I suppose when pressed, one must make the choice between the positive value of using these woods against the danger of their extinction. While it may easy for me to opt for the former, what would I say if I knew the wood I am using came from the last tree of its species? They must have known this on Easter Island when their last tree was being cut which essentially ended their civilization.

Mechanics. A shop and a small set of tools is required for making daiza; however the number is few and they are not prohibitively expensive. If anyone is interested in creating daiza, I would recommend buying high quality tools. Let me list my tools in the order of importance in terms of frequency of use and necessity for making daiza. I use a Fordham grinding tool for two functions—grinding, with a oval, diamond head and sanding: 1 1/2" sanding drum (80 grit paper); Hitachi miter saw (12" cutting depth); small band saw; table mounted belt sander; an edge planner for gluing wood together. (The brand of the last three tools is Delta— inexpensive, but adequate.) For hand sanding, I use the following grits: 50, 100, 150 and 220 grits. More than 2/3 of the time (and much of the Zen) making daiza is in the hand sanding, using the four grits indicated above. All of my daiza are finished with Tung oil, 0000 steel wool between coats.

Defeating Conditions
(Critical consideration applied to a suiseki)

As indicated above, I do not use suiban; I exclusively use daiza which I create. Thus, I will restrict consideration to stones on daiza. Likely the most serious defeating condition is some notable feature that is conspicuously unintended. Bad stones and cheap wood are certainly defeating; the most obvious flaw with stones is their inappropriateness to constitute a serious finished piece. A favorite "defeater" for me is intrusive subject matter, e.g., a mountain stone where it is impossible to see the suiseki "through the mountain." I am reminded of an abstract expressionist painter friend of mine several decades ago who would destroy a piece if he or anyone else saw any subject matter in the work. I am not quite this extreme with suiseki; but it is precisely for this reason that distant mountain and plateau stones are preferable to their more specifically detailed counterparts. For this reason, I am inclined to avoid any subject matter at all. As with all works of art—any "hole in the canvas" will be defeating - this is when the eye is continually drawn back to a particular spot, which fails to scan visually. Aesthetically, the following principle is rather sound—works of art are not about the world, they are about the work of art.

(More) Aesthetics of the Suiseki

When I experience a new suiseki (either my own of someone else's), I approach it in a manner similar to any other work of art. This being the case, following are the kinds of questions in the order that I ask them: What is it? What is it about? Does it work, and/or make sense? How does the piece fit in the context of it creator's corpus? Critical scrutiny is inescapable, thus the inevitability of applying defeating conditions? In multiple-stone pieces this most often amounts to placement and the spacing between the stones—as little as 1/8" can make an incredible difference.

The question, "What it is?" may be answered by identifying the particular genre. Then it is within this genre that we can apply standard aesthetic considerations. We can consider the specific "aboutness," e.g., in my more recent nontraditional work, a piece is often "about" a particular suiseki concept, such as "cut stones" or "traditional daiza" (see #2). One problem that often takes time to come to light and results from "living with the piece" is, "Does the piece make sense?" Occasionally a piece that I have done weeks of even months earlier, may reveal some flaw which attacks the "sense of the piece" (see #4; one can find these two stones, with a different configuration in last year's work). This judgment is often made on aesthetic grounds. Finally, pre-aesthetically we might ask, "Does this piece show the stone in its best possible light?" (#4) In the past I have argued that in contrast to bonsai, which are always experience visually at a distance, thus two-dimensionally, suiseki are theoretically more tactile than visual, thus they can be experienced "three dimensionally;" nevertheless, pragmatically suiseki are nearly as "frontal" as are bonsai. Thus, it may be impractical if not irrelevant to consider suiseki as having a "significant back-side."

The specific aesthetic properties of suiseki are much the same as those for any sculpture; and the piece itself determines the priority among these. A weakness in balance is often most obvious; following this, are the consideration of structure, color, light and line. I must admit, as potential works of art, suiseki tend to be a lacking in complexity in contrast to the fine arts; but after all, stones are stones; and the potential aesthetic prospects derived from wedding stones to daiza can only generate so much complexity and aesthetic interest. This was a conscious consideration in my introducing multiple stones into my work (see all of the recent work except #2). The value that negative space provides in these pieces is surprising. Creating negative space with a single stone is virtually impossible; however, with more than one stone, it becomes natural if not inevitable. Does the potential value of negative space increase proportionately to the increased number of stones? It does not—beyond three stones, this value flattens or even decreases. Among multiples we can distinguish those pieces whose adjacent stones are actually touching (# 3, 5 and 6) and those not (# 1,4 and 10); with the former, negative space is markedly reduced (this also applies to # 7, 8 and 9).

My pieces have been criticized for being more about the daiza than about the stone. (This has been most vocal from Felix Rivera and his group.) To the extent that this is so, it is not only legitimate, but defeating to my artistic objectives. While it is true that no stone is a suiseki, no suiseki can be about the daiza. Ironically, suiseki is not about the stone per se either; rather, it is about the suiseki work as a gestalt, a fact often too little appreciated. Not only does the daiza bring the stone to life, but more importantly, it creates a piece that is a work of art. The suiseki novice may fail to grasp this, erroneously believing that suiseki are all and only about stones. In a similar vein, I find this to be a fundamental shortfall using suiban in suiseki—suiban are generic rather than unique relative to the created work of suiseki art.

Evolution of My Suiseki

I began doing suiseki nearly 30 years ago. Shortly after its publication, I read Covello and Yoshimura's book The Japanese Art of Stone Appreciation; I began making daiza the quality of which were as inept as was the false information provided in this book regarding daiza construction. Of the 150 of so daiza that I made that first summer, I think that I might have two remaining, which I kept for historical reasons. Once I figured out the concept of suiseki and stone presentation on a daiza, I spent a year or so making tradition suiseki daiza. Following this, I continued the traditional vertical perspective of the daiza, but the detailing became more expressive. The third generation found the daiza unfolding and becoming an island, where the perspective shifted from being vertical to becoming horizontal. The idea for these daiza came from the islands upon which the stone groups rested in Ryoan-ji in Kyoto. These were fairly successful and continued until about three years ago when I began doing multiple stone pieces; (see my web-site, for images of the early stages and the multiples which are on "island" daiza).

Once my Japanese garden began to mature (Summer, 2008), and I observed the presence of some tendencies toward Postmodernism, I began to consider how this might be realized in the stone pieces. Initially, this consisted in distinct properties of the daiza—they became flat plains, either square or rectangular; and I included the potential for more than one level of these flat plains. The stones in these pieces gravitated toward being conspicuously vertical in attitude, i.e., many of these were "about verticality" (see #1). This work culminated with four large pieces using Murphys stone, the largest of which weighs about 60 pounds (see the corner photo of my gallery). Since my early days doing suiseki, I have appreciated the fact that there are two indigenous American-stone-types for suiseki—desert stone, and Murphys stone. These four pieces are particularly important to me because Murphys stone is no longer available, especially specimens such as these.

This designation of my work as "Postmodern," may be more misleading than informative. What I intend here is an attempt to respond to aspects of contemporary culture and its art. If suiseki is to be alive, it must be sensitive to the culture of the 20th if not the 21st. Much of "Postmodern" art finds its meaning by indirection, irony, even being a bit facetious, which is neither complicated nor theoretically opaque—there are a few basic Postmodernistic concepts that can be incorporated into one's work, e.g., central for me is the notion of simulacrum—the art work is twice or thrice removed from reality—an example I apply to my Japanese garden is the primary element of bonsai trees that I have returned to the ground; thus from the trees in the forest, to the bonsai pot and now back into the Japanese garden. This is slightly more difficult with suiseki; however it is not impossible—the earlier suiseki tradition was based upon representations of nature in miniature stones on daiza; this evolved into abstract forms in stone on custom daiza; I have attempted to extend this an additional step to making pieces that are meta-suiseki, i.e., objects whose sole referent is the concepts central to "suiseki" itself. An example here might be a recent piece using an obviously cut stone, set on a square daiza with a circular 1/4" deep, round depression cut from the daiza (see #2)– the piece is "about" the concept of "cut stones," how they are set on daiza and the business of a custom daiza. The piece goes to the potential negativity regarding each of the three concepts. This constitutes a good deal more than simply playing with aesthetic ideas or concepts, viz. "Postmodernism."

I did a set of anatomical pieces (see # 10) for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the historical Japanese interest in artistic subject matter directed toward erotica. This would hardly be worth mentioning save the fact that this, coupled with a suggestion from my student Ashley Tini, evolved to multiple stone pieces with stones resting horizontally, one on top another (see # 7, 8 and 9). As distinct from the vertical pieces mentioned above (see # 1), these horizontal pieces became another evolution of my work

The final group of recent work is what I identify as "cluster pieces" (see # 3, 5 and 6) which are either vertical of horizontal, often in groups of three stones with no space between them. I see a direct connection here between the verticals (spaced and not) (see # 1), the horizontal work (see # 7, 8 and 9) and these clusters. In this work, the daiza have moved away from consisting of 90 degree angles and have gravitated toward shapes reflecting the stone groups; these however are still flat plains.

Why on earth would anyone go to the trouble of generating the above text? Suiseki is a viable art form that is real and is important. Does anyone in the world care? The community that does is very small. Is there any possibility that this can change? It is fairly unlikely that his will change significantly in the near future, but if there is any hope it may reside in suiseki organizations around the country who are bringing attention to the phenomenon of suiseki. And if not here, then there is little hope.

Spring, 2010