Carving

Our topic this time is carving.

Humans have carved wood since prehistoric times, developing many extraordinary techniques over millennia.

In Japan, the carving of Buddhist statues is about giving physical form to hopes and prayers.

Today, carving is used to create beautiful, tactile everyday items... as well as new artforms.

Explore the world of carving designs.

Hello. Welcome to DESIGN TALKS plus. I'm Andrea Pompilio.

Hi, I'm Shaula. So, our topic this time is 'carving.' And we have the perfect guest today. We have sculptor and Buddhist artist Yoshimizu Kaimon.

- Welcome!
- Thank you.

- Hello.
- This is a fascinating topic.

I understand you're also a Buddhist priest?

Yes, I was born in a temple family, but my father died quite young and I inherited his position.

I do my personal work during the week.

You create your sculptures.

Yes. On weekends, I wear my traditional clothes and go to the temple.

I understand that you carve Buddhist statues.

Could you tell us a little about the relationship between such statues and design?

Most people think of Buddhist statues as very holy, special things.

But they're made by people.

They can become refined or degrade over the centuries, and today's statues have come to us through millennia.

I think of them as a single design.

That's very interesting.

Smooth surfaces created by meticulous, delicate technique.

Together with Buddhist decorations, the effect is awe-inspiring.

Yoshimizu's designs are a focal point for faith, but are also appreciated for their artistic merits.

His workshop is in the historic capital of Nara.

The city is entwined with Buddhism, and is home to world heritage sites such as Todai-ji temple.

Several Buddhist statues here have been designated national treasures.

Yoshimizu became interested in art at a young age, going on to study sculpture at one of Japan's most prominent art colleges.

I hated that I'd been born into a temple family, and I really hated the idea of carving Buddhist statues.

But when I began studying sculpture at university, I explored its roots in Japan.

And I found that the earliest wooden sculptures made with historic techniques were Buddhist carvings.

Yoshimizu devoted himself to the creation of his own ideal Buddhist statues.

His wealth of technique can also be seen in his other artistic works.

It's an animal motif, but I work as though I'm carving divinity.

It may be an ordinary animal, but some believe that they contain the divine.

This philosophy has roots in an ancient Japanese belief in animism, which says the divine lives in every aspect of the natural world.

Yoshimizu pursues the sacred through his designs.

But what is the personal philosophy that he carves into each piece?

You've offered to show us how you work.

Yes.

- What a treat.
- It is!

What are you going to carve?

A very standard item for a Buddhist sculptor: a lotus flower.

They grow in the mud but produce beautiful, untouched blossoms.

The lotus is a sacred flower for Buddhists.

I'll carve one of its petals.

He begins with a chisel, forming a rough shape.

You're making such bold strokes, but the shape is very clean.

Perfectly formed.

Yes, I know the shape of what I want, so I go straight for that form.

That doesn't sound good.

You listen to the sound?

It's almost all about the sound.

- Interesting!
- Sound, huh?

If the sound is off, that means I have to reconsider and change my approach.

The grain is everything when carving wood.

If you place the chisel at the wrong angle, you could end up splitting the wood down the grain.

So you have to think very carefully about how to position the chisel for each piece of wood as you carve.

They don't really teach you concrete lessons on carving.

Once the overall form comes into view, he switches to another tool to begin on the details.

You were making very bold strokes at the beginning.

But now you've changed your technique completely.

You're using your hands more, in a much gentler way.

I'm removing everything that's out of place.

I just keep chiseling it away.

But each time you remove an element, the whole thing is thrown out of balance.

Once that's all done, light has a major effect on how it looks.

I might think I've done a good job at midnight, but then be very unhappy with it the next morning.

It looks different!

That's it. It can be quite a battle to get the whole thing feeling right.

How did you actually learn to carve?

Did you study these techniques at university?

They don't really teach you concrete lessons on carving.

Really?

Partly it's ideas you develop yourself.

But I also learned a lot about carving techniques from other artists with more experience.

One of the biggest inspirations for me was Kaikei, who I studied in grad school.

He was a famous early 13th-century Buddhist artist who worked with the sculptor Unkei.

These temple guardian statues were carved in 1203 by Kaikei and Unkei, and several other sculptors.

Kaikei's powerful dynamism, combined with an elegant, painterly style, had a major influence on subsequent Buddhist sculpture.

One of Kaikei's best-known works is the "Amida Nyorai" in Todai-ji temple's Shunjo Hall.

Yoshimizu chose this as the topic for his master's thesis, studying the carving technique, characteristics, and even the ingredients of the paint before recreating it as a model.

Kaikei was an enormous influence on your work.

How is he different from other artists?

He's just so focused on detail.

Every detail of the carving is part of the larger design.

On the one hand, his Buddhist sculptures are people - he's given them human form, but at the same time, he's also creating a holy ideal.

If you look at the hands of his sculptures, they feel very realistic.

Yet they're actually quite abstract shapes.

That's true!

Kaikei's aesthetic sense was extraordinary.

Is that something you strive for as well?

Oh, definitely.

As I researched Kaikei, I found that aspect really appealed to me.

What's really interesting is that when I see someone carving a Buddhist statue I think, yes, of course these are made by people.

But when I find myself in front of one, it instantly changes my mood.

I feel drawn to pray.

That's an extraordinary power.

That's true, and I think it comes down to faith.

It's certainly the goal I aim for in my work.

I don't want to make Buddhist statues that are out of the ordinary, or have strange shapes.

Just ones that inspire people to prayer.

That would be a success for me, personally.

After all, that's usually the purpose of my work.

So that's always one goal that I have in mind.

It comes down to emotion.

I think so. It's the same for art.

The highest possible praise for a piece of art is that it touches a viewer's emotions.

The lotus petal from earlier would end up like this.

Quite a change, right?

Amazing.

That's incredible.

It doesn't look like wood.

These thin veins are made with slivers of gold leaf.

This technique is called "kirigane," and was used by Kaikei.

"Kirigane," I see.

I might use this in one of my other artworks instead of a Buddhist carving.

It's not for a Buddhist piece?

No. This here is a mouse I carved.

- Cute!
- That's adorable!

The whiskers are made from platinum.

So they're a set.

It feels like they're part of the same story, which is fun.

Yes. There is a story that forms the inspiration for each carving.

But if I fix it too rigidly, that's all it will ever be.

I like to leave something to the viewer's imagination.

Incredible.

I'm a real cat lover, and looking at this, I suspect you might be as well?

I do love cats.

It's carved from wood, of course.

Yes.

But it looks so soft.

I really wanted to recreate the soft fluffiness of a cat.

But that's not exactly easy to carve in wood.

There's no way to perfectly replicate the look of a cat's fur.

So working out how to convey this sense of fluffiness in a realistic way actually turned out to be quite challenging.

In the end, I think a large part of it came down to choosing the right kind of wood for the job.

How would you personally differentiate between art and a Buddhist sculpture?

I think that boundary has faded for me over the years.

In fact, I'd consider them the same thing in the last two to three years.

I would brace myself when I made a Buddhist carving, telling myself it had to be holy.

But there's no real difference when making an artwork.

If there is a distinction, then it's the restrictions presented by working within Buddhist doctrine.

So perhaps that's a slight difference.

But Buddhist sculpture could be a lot freer than it is, and I've felt a lot more relaxed recently when I make those works.

Interesting.

Next, carving designs that are forging new relationships between people and everyday items.

Mitani Ryuji is one of Japan's top woodwork artists.

He's spent over 40 years creating everyday items for Japanese lifestyles.

His designs are simple and elegant.

Yet they always radiate warmth.

He uses untreated wood from cherry, zelkova, and walnut trees.

His designs are completed by a team that specializes in each element of the labor.

Each item is carved with the utmost care for the variety, quality, and woodgrain of that particular piece of wood.

Carving is almost like mediation.
It's very calming.

Wood carving is
one of our earliest arts.

I feel connected to
the first humans who did this.

Mitani finds special significance in the act of carving.

His own personal philosophy shines through with each completed piece.

Carving creates elements
I don't plan for.

It's imperfect, yet it connects
the items with their users.

The act of carving shapes a connection between user and product.

Even Mitani's lacquer work serves to highlight the carving process.

White "urushi" lacquer is unique to Japan.

Mitani takes the unusual step of layering it with more common black "urushi."

The colors deepen over time.

Eventually they work with the carved surface to create a truly unique piece.

He calls these 'growing plates' because people can enjoy watching them change and mature over time.

Mitani's works are a microcosm of his love for carving.

He's also found some customers swear to unexpected benefits.

Folks say they're inspired
by the tableware.

That it feels like a walk in the forest.
Isn't that fascinating?

Connecting tableware and people, and discovering new values along the way.

This is Mitani's carving philosophy.

We have some of his work in the studio.

Aren't they lovely?

They're so beautiful.

The carving is so vivid, isn't it?

It is, yes.

I see a lot of similar marks in carved works.

But dishes are normally very smooth to the touch.

Instead of hiding them away, Mitani-san is opting to show off the marks made by carving.

I like the idea of these marks becoming part of the user's everyday life.

Come to think of it, you really don't see all that many carved items in the home anymore.

That's true, I hadn't realized that.

It used to be that every pillar in a traditional home had to be made by felling a whole tree.

Then it would be carved, and most times those marks would remain in the wood.

But it's all done by machines now - both the carving and the construction.

Everything is just slotted together.

It's hard to find marks made by hand on anything at all these days.

So a plate or bowl like this feels very new and fresh to us.

It's a sign of changing values, isn't it?

This would be very ordinary millennia ago.

It would, yes.

I think people are much more likely to be struck and moved by things that they don't normally encounter in everyday life.

I find this really interesting, don't you?

Mitani-san spoke of the act of carving as something imperfect, an imperfect art.

Do you have any thoughts about that?

Buddhist sculpture and carving is all about removing any trace of the work.

So it's the opposite approach.

But these days there are a lot of techniques and tricks you can draw on to create a 'perfect' work.

Yet it's often the imperfections that speak to the viewer's emotions.

I actually pay a lot of attention to that.

I don't add mistakes on purpose, but I embrace whatever comes out of my pursuit of perfection.

I understand that you work primarily with wood.

Do you have any thoughts on it as a material for carving?

I find that Japanese people are very passionate about the act of carving wood.

Even though it's not actually a very suitable material.

It has a grain which means you can only ever carve it in one direction, and makes detailed work very difficult.

And it's quite fragile.

You can carve stone and leave it outside, no problem.

But wood will rot in ten years.

Yet we choose it anyway because Japanese people love wood so much.

I'm the same.

I love and respect it as a material.

That's a very big part of what I do.

That's really interesting.

Now let's meet an artistic duo who use carving to explore new forms of art.

A distorted portrait.

A new angle reveals unusual bumps and curves.

It's actually a carved image.

It's the work of art collective Nerhol.

Graphic designer Tanaka Yoshihisa shapes the ideas and sculptor Iida Ryuta carves them.

They formed a duo in 2007.

Their technique involves carving printed images stacked in layers.

Their portrait series layers 200 photographs taken in series over three minutes.

Each stack is then carved with a blade to express the subject's fine movements.

People can't hold perfectly still
so flickers appear.

It's a simple image of their face.

But it's also an archive of their
facial tics over time.

Carving reveals those
small unconscious moments.

Nerhol use carving to reveal the invisible.

This work's motif is a roadside tree that had been cut down.

They photographed 120 separate cross-sections of the tree's trunk.

Carving the resulting stack reveals changes in the tree's rings, reminding us of its long life.

Stacking the same images but carving them differently shows new aspects of the same tree.

Despite being simple 'roadside trees,' the work reveals how each tree is an individual with its own relationship to time.

There's so much we overlook
in our everyday lives.

Important things. Our work shines
a spotlight on them.

Carving makes them visible
to me and to others.

Both artists work in their own fields as graphic designer and sculptor - a perfect collaboration.

Each shape is utterly unique on every plane.

What began as an exploration of carving has become a new way to examine objects and people.

For me, carving is about exploring
or rediscovering your subject.

I think our work is about
learning and exploring.

Carving always reveals
a new discovery.

We have some of Nerhol's work in the studio with us.

They're incredibly innovative, aren't they?

The whole approach and concept is new to me. It's really novel.

Any thoughts?

I think they're fascinating, and they're also quite extraordinary.

And oddly reminiscent of a real tree.

It's strangely realistic.

All trees grow in layers that form rings.

And each of those rings contains time.

It grows constantly throughout the year.

Anyone who carves wood thinks about the grain and maps out how their artwork will look.

So I do feel there is some overlap there.

But I'm fascinated by how they've managed to reveal time, how they've managed to make it visible.

For me, it's a new perspective on carving.

Interesting.

Any thoughts on the collaborative aspect?

I enjoy collaborating on art.

Working alone, it begins and ends with me, but with two of us, it spins off into totally new, unexpected directions.

Creating a Buddhist statue requires a lot of different crafts.

You need to know how to color, how to work with lacquer, as well as how to carve wood, and how to bring all that together.

This has been done collaboratively for centuries.

But the modern bias towards lone artists means we're seeing more people locking themselves away to work alone.

There are fewer opportunities to collaborate.

But it's through working together that we make new strides.

I'd love to take on more collaborative projects if I had the opportunity.

Nerhol said that carving was about the act of discovery, of exploration.

Right.

I wonder if the act of prayer is layered in with the exploration and discovery.

I think there's a lot to unpack there.

It's difficult to imagine just from looking at a completed work, but carving each piece requires an incredible number of strokes with the chisel.

It takes an incredible amount of work to carve a single wooden form.

To stay focused throughout that difficult and intense process requires a lot of willpower.

I think there's a natural connection to prayer and spirituality there.

It sounds simple to say that carving is prayer, but the act of carving draws on all the skills I've built up over years.

It draws on my own wishes, and on the life of the original tree.

All of that is part of the act of creation.

And I believe that it's this deeper significance in every piece that leads to amazing work like this, and to creating warmth like in those wooden plates.

I've really enjoyed our discussion today.

- Thank you very much.
- Thank you.

Thank you.