Tea Ceremony
2018 Artist Residency at Manitoga
As part of the Manitoga project I decided to hold a Japanese Tea ceremony. After becoming familiar with the property and the main house, I began to think about the different aspects of Manitoga. It was a home for the Wright family, and I imagined they must have had many guests and visitors.
Russel and his wife Mary Wright offered simple ways to achieve a comfortable, well-designed, and organized living environment; it is a testament to their good design that Manitoga also provides a natural flow for accommodating and welcoming people. Yukie Schmitz, a student of Chanoyu, the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, designed the details of the ceremony. The tea ceremony is defined as a complete art form. At its core is the idea of "omotenashi", roughly translated as ‘hospitality’.
For several reasons, I felt that the focal point to my project was to honor nature’s most vital resource, water. All of nature starts with water, and all of us begin life floating in water before birth. The medium for the inks I made was water distilled from the quarry. The tea we drink is made with water. The chanoyu paid homage to Russel’s interest in Japanese culture, and gave me the opportunity to extend to others the hospitality I experienced during the residency.