nui project

hand work by Keisuke Nomaguchi (born 1976)  nylon-wool yarn, cotton thread, hand stitch

embroidered ready made shirt by Keisuke Nomaguchi
His stitches cover the surface, and the shirt shrinks by more than half, becoming very thick.

embroidered ready made shirt by Setusko Mori (born 1955).
Her stitches overlap themselves,and she repeats them to achieve dot-like shapes.

detail of above   (cotton shirt, cotton threads, hand stitch)

These images are from the Nui Project books, documents of the embroidery work made at a rehabilitation facility for mentally handicapped people in Kagoshima Japan, Shobu Gakuen.   The Nui Project uses ready-made shirts as a base for embroidery. That the shirts become impossible to wear as they become distorted with embroidery stitches that have no names adds magic.  Or nature.

"The work is composed within the constraints of the extremely narrow scope of the immediate visual field.......Staying within that narrow scope of the field of view, without a plan for the composition as a whole, generates an emergence, an unfolding, that evokes the beauty created by nature."   Shin Fukumori, director of Kobo Shobu

The content in this post is taken from two books, Nui Project and Nui Project 2.  The books were published in commemoration of the exhibition held at the creative growth art center in Oakland California in 2003, Fabulous Fabrics: Made in Japan, Yukiko Koide curator.

The books were recommended to me by Sandra Brownlee and by Karen Thiessen.

wabi sabi wedding

This post is about some of April and Andrew's wedding decor

The couple made gifts for their guests - ceramic salt and pepper bowls by the bride, a wooden tray to hold them by the groom

April used cyanotype to print ferns and wild-flower silhouettes on the boxes that held those gifts.

The bride also made thirty of these dotted pots to hold lavender plants.  The pots were carried by (and gifted to) her friends and the lavender has since been planted in our rock garden at the cottage.

Live plants were used for the centrepieces - above maiden hair fern, below, juniper.

Each plant was carefully planted and arranged with moss or rocks in glass bowls, the whole grounded with a flat porcelain plate made by the bride

April made other blue and white plates for the wedding. The ones in the above photo were used to hold the seating name-tags (little gift boxes full of candy made for the couple by the groom's co-workers, seen at the back of the table).

A denim aesthetic.

She made blue and white birds as gifts for children who attended.

how to see?

 We can't improve on nature.

 These August days have given me time to stitch and read. Swim.
 I am not thinking.  I have 'no mind'.

But there is room inside me for this huge August sky.
It IS amazing, isn't it?

This is the first summer that Ned and I have lived at his family cottage nearly full time and although he might not agree, I think that we have both slowed into a dream like rhythm.  I do nothing, yet I work all the time.  Thoughts and ideas rise up.

Old Beds

We are putting old beds into the new sleeping cabin. All the kids are coming home.

Wabi Sabi

Wabi: humble by choice
Sabi: appreciate rustiness

because nothing, including ourselves, is permanent.