Blown and sandblasted glass bowls on a light box
Wabi Sabi, 2010
Blown and sandblasted glass bowls on a light box
Wabi Sabi, 2010
Blown and sandblasted glass bowls on a light box
Wabi Sabi (detail), 2010
Blown and sandblasted glass bowl on a light box
Wabi Sabi (detail), 2010
Blown and sandblasted glass bowl on a light box
Wabi Sabi (detail), 2010
Blown and sandblasted glass bowls on a light box
Wabi Sabi, 2010

Wabi Sabi

Artist

Wabi sabi is a term used to describe the aesthetic of the Japanese tea ceremony, seen in such aspects as the tea room, garden, utensils and other decoration.  It is a concept rooted in Zen and Taoist philosophy and suggests such qualities as impermanence, humility, austerity and imperfection. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things.

The piece ‘Wabi Sabi' is a representation of this aspect of the tea ceremony using the medium of blown and sandblasted glass. Traditional materials used in the tea ceremony such as ceramic, lacquered wood, bamboo and iron, age and become imperfect over time, in a way glass rarely does. This piece uses other aspects of the material qualities of glass – translucence, rigidity and the qualities of erosion through sandblasting – along with the repetition of the form of the tea bowl to represent this aesthetic.