Air and Rocks by Yuko K.

 

 

From the Artist "I have been working as a contemporary artist living in NYC. The big city has significant energy that causes excitement and cultural stimulations that we are easily inspired by at any moment, but, simultaneously, the city’s flashiness, busyness, invisible tension and chaos definitely exist behind those inspirations.

Many contemporary artists who prefer, with their reasons, to live in the city must have the feeling of a mission or desire to seek an incentive constantly among the fast pace and passage of time, which, in a sense, must be the necessary nature for our new artistic creations.

However, we must always be prepared to deal with the large big gap between light and shade that the big city holds, and with the external energy we must expend which, in the end, is a sizeable amount no matter how conscious we are of it or not. Whenever I come to realize this, I know it is time for me to be in nature to restore myself.

This trip was started from California to Arizona and then on to Utah.

The landscapes had gradually changed, day by day, from desert to the stratum of red soil over each day’s nearly 12 to 14 hours of driving.

The excitement in seeing with my own eyes, such vast expanse of red soil land among the huge wonder shaped rocks in the National Park area from Arizona to Utah was, in fact, beyond description to express in words.

I was entirely removed from any normal sense of space, as I just felt the huge energy of nature appearing before me. It is easy to recognize our human existence as tiny and miniscule among this boundless mother earth, and that we are definitely made to live under the forces of this planet.

I also noted that many unique, even humanistic, configurations of huge, naturally formed rocks revealed the most inspiring, original and harmonious art between sky and red earth indeed.

Since making this trip it began to occur to me that, even as New York seems here to be an independent large city full of chaos, in fact where we are now living is an adjoining part of the vast scope on this  American continent connected with the natural world, that always must hold a certain energy deep inside of the earth, even if invisible.

Knowing that we are originally, and will continue to be, part of the great nature of planet earth, no matter how much it seems we live in the chaotic existence of the big city, is one of the largest encouragements of my daily life now."

 

 

August 12th, 2017 - September 9th, 2017 Mulberry Street Library