art

 

   The art work I make is all related in one way or another to gardens and nature. Experiences I had while hiking and camping in the mountains when young, and designing gardens when older, has spilled over into other forms of creative expression.

 

My wife, Momoko Takeshita, is a ceramic artist. I started using clay from her studio and mixing it with grasses and leaves to make sculptures — bringing the garden/nature and ceramics together.

 

The bontei tray gardens I make distill certain aspects of gardens into tray sculptures — a patina, a sense of balance, an underlying story.

 

Omega Point and Miwa-an are installations that draw directly from traditional Japanese culture — karesansui gardens and the tea ceremony, respectively — in a contemporary way.

 

I often do illustrations for the books I write such as the scratchboards in The Art of Setting Stones