Robert Lee Morris Cast 7″ Bronze Plate with Hole

This is a heavy and thick bowl/plate of cast bronze, part of my Wabi Sabi collection of objects for the home. It has a most unusual texture and shows the fabulous flaw in the casting process of a gorgeous hole, and corresponding “river” of lighter metal that seems to flow out of it. It is a sculpture for the heart chakra.

Wabi Sabi is the term for the Japanese expression of beauty with a soul. It connotes objects and surfaces of common everyday tools carry a level of aged and worn spirit, a radical kind of new beauty. I was brought up in Japan from the ages of 7 to 11, a very formative period of my life. I lived in off base (USAF) housing in a tiny village surrounded by rice paddies and zen gardens. I played in and out of the magnificent Japanese school buildings in my neighborhood, old cedar, Tatami matting  and rice sliding doors. I distinctly remember how worn and soft the cedar doorframes were, how out Tabi covered feet would slip and slide on the slick highly polished cedar floors, smoothed from ages of slippered feet moving up and down the hallways of the buildings. I participated in classic tea ceremonies where every minute detail of the tea room was a perfect composure of Wabi Sabi elements, along with one dynamic Ichebana arrangement. These pieces from my home accessory collection are mostly created in the tradition of Wabi Sabi understated beauty.