Shinichi Maruyama 'Water Sculpture' and 'Kusho'

Water Sculpture

I am fascinated by the fragility and incompleteness that

exists with all things beautiful.

I throw water into the air, and in mid-flight it changes

shape constantly, being pulled by gravity and bursting

with surface tension. Each flight barely lasts more than a

second.

In each moment, the water becomes a beautiful figure which

can be defined as a “part man-made and part natural”

sculpture.

I wanted to capture these beautiful impermanent water

sculptures by photographing them in the exact moment, when

the essence of their existence is pure.

Kusho

As a young student, I often wrote Chinese characters in sumi ink. I loved the nervous, precarious feeling of sitting before an empty white page, the moment just before my brush touched the paper. I was always excited to see the unique result of each new brushing.

Once your brush touches paper, you must finish the character, you have one chance. It can never be repeated or duplicated. You must commit your full attention and being to each stroke. Liquids, like ink, are elusive by nature. As sumi ink finds its own path through the paper grain, liquid finds its unique path as it moves through air.

Remembering those childhood moments, of ink and empty page, I fashioned a large “brush” and bucket of ink. I get the same feeling, a precarious nervous excitement, as I stand before the empty studio space. Each stroke is unique, ephemeral. I can never copy or recreate them. I know something fantastic is happening. “a decisive moment”, but I can’t fully understand the event until I look at these captured afterimages, these paintings in the sky.