[Title] Snow
[Artist] Yutaka Sone
[Date] December 10, 2010 – Febuary 28, 2011
1.
I love snow.
This love didn’t begin recently –but dates back to my childhood. My father took me to Tenjindaira Ski Resort in Tanigawa-dake, and that became the beginning of my fascination with snow through skiing. Even now, after moving to LA, I still go skiing on Mammoth Mountain in Sierra Nevada at least thirty days out of the year. It was always through skiing that I looked at snow. In other words, I’ve always skied in order to see snow.
About three years ago, I got together with some friends to make my own ski boards in my backyard garage, and since it was summer by the time we finished, we traveled to Whistler Glacier, Canada, for skiing. At the time, we confirmed together that skiing is like drawing a line in a glittering silver world – that “skiing is poetry.”
Several years ago in February, I was on a lift in the Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort as always. The ski lift was called “Chair 25” – one of my favorites. Powdery snow was falling lightly, blown by the western wind from the cold Pacific Ocean. Of course I’d seen snowflakes many times before, but at that moment, large snow crystals started falling into my black gloves one by one, and “our eyes met.” I stared intently, and the snow was eventually thawed away by my body heat. The snowflakes had six branches, and thorns like small hairs. It only lasted for about three seconds; yet, I felt eternal beauty in that moment. “Skiing is poetry” for me, and snow is something more primal than skiing.
That night, I made a pledge to myself. I will make the beauty of the brilliant snow crystals I saw at that moment eternal, as sculpture. I told myself repeatedly that I would make it come true.
It took some time to start working on the snow crystals since that day. I had been busy making exhibition plans, and was in the middle of creating two or three large-scale sculptures. Until they were completed, I couldn’t launch the snow sculpture project. Therefore I obsessed even more with the dream of creating the snow sculpture. This was the pledge to myself that night. At the same time, this was also an escape from my daily work.
First, I read all the books on snow that I could get my hands on. Next, I looked at scientific publications to learn how snow takes the shape it does. I read about those who had done groundbreaking work on snow crystals – the 19th century photographer Mr. Bentley from Vermont, Dr. Ukichiro Nakaya who succeeded in artificially producing the crystallization of snow, Prof. Libbrecht at the California Institute of Technology, and those who even today continue to advance the work of Dr. Nakaya. I read about the great works by these pioneers, and their struggles. Then I would go to bed dreaming about snowflakes dancing in the sky.
When I visited Japan to take part in Akiyoshidai International Art Village, I visited the Ukichiro Nakaya Museum of Snow and Ice in Kanazawa. I was deeply impressed by the work of Dr. Nakaya and his assistant photographer, and began to feel a strong conviction to turn the snow crystals into sculptures. At the same time, I felt strongly that I had to examine the crystals under a microscope, as Mr. Bentley and Dr. Nakaya did. Through this procedure, I would be able to create a certain relationship between myself and the falling snow, and this concrete sense of distance would determine the direction I would take in producing the sculpture. I felt that I could also reassess my own understanding of snow.
My criteria in creating the snow crystal sculpture were like this:
– Even if it were a tiny tiny landscape, see the snow crystals as continuous with the landscape.
– Imagine the snow crystals as dancing in the sky. And see them.
– Don’t be too figurative. (This comes from my artist intuition. If it became too figurative, the poetic state of the snow crystals dancing in the sky would be lost.)
– Every snowflake has a different shape. Choose the shapes from somewhere between the figurative and the abstract, and keep an imaginative opening to feel the possibility of their existence.
Following these criteria I decided to make the microscope. I also had a personal interest in digital technology, so after reviewing the principle of photography, I purchased a digital camera (Nikon D10). By connecting two camera bellows and attaching a 200 mm macro-lens at the tip, the digital camera was converted into a microscope. The approximately one meter long lens was not designed as a structure on its own, so I spent an entire summer modifying it in order to stabilize the lens, camera and tripod. In the end, I connected my Mac bookG5 so that the shutter would gracefully descend in a single click. Also I bought a small open tent to protect the equipment from the falling snow. After training to get the focus right, again and again, I loaded all the stuff onto my beloved 1992 Toyota Camry Metallic Blue, and waited for winter.
Meanwhile, I had been busy working on other projects, and was frustrated that nobody officially supported the snow sculpture project. I can say now that it was just a common miscommunication between artist and gallery, or simply the artist’s recklessness. At this point, there wasn’t any study work or model, nor had I chosen the material of the sculpture. So it was no surprise that there was no sponsor for the project, but I was impatient to express the landscape of snow crystals dancing in the sky.
I began attending poetry readings during nighttime when I was free. In the city on the West Coast, deep-seated Beatniks culture is unbrokenly living. I began reading my own poetry in galleries and live music spaces. What I read were improvised poems about how snow is born, how it grows, how it dances in the sky, and how it lands. I continued to recite poems changing the content every time according to my feeling and the weather. For me, poetry reading is the score and concept sheet for making sculpture. I had a slight expectation that a rich man would listen to my poetry and think, “Wow, this is interesting. I will support this sculpture project!” But my actual listeners were punk rockers and heavy metal kids, and at some point I started my band and I was the lead vocal there. What the hell? —-I can say so now that I am writing about the whole process of my sculpture project. At that time I realized that my poetry spread into the audience, and was filled with the happy feeling of unity of the improvised music and my poems – something you would never have in the visual arts. We did tours, of course, because we were a rock band. New York, Mexico, Amsterdam, Paris… and in LA, we played almost every week. I bought a Gibson SG guitar and played whatever chords I could play. After the band experienced some incidents, we broke up. The gallery owner sentenced me to suspend music activity, since my daytime art production had slowed due to the band. But my initial goal was achieved. The gallery decided to fully support the snow crystals project.
My beloved Camry and handmade digital microscope, patiently waiting for winter, came to life once snow began to fall. Checking the snow report on the internet, I head for Mammoth Mountain with my assistant. Go, Camry, go!
To photograph snow crystals, we usually planned to arrive at Mammoth Mountain at the same time as the beginning of storm. If we can get there just before the storm comes, we don’t need to put on tire chains, and we can set up the tent and camera on dry ground. Then we wait for the storm. At the top of Mammoth Mountain, the wind speed often reaches 50mph. My assistant is already quite nervous. After three times, we hadn’t succeeded to photograph snow crystals. Indeed I’m not so concerned. I believe that eventually I can photograph the crystals if I keep commuting to Mammoth Mountain. Plus, after the photo shooting, it’s time for skiing on fresh virgin snow.
It began to snow. We were pioneers of complex intertwined events and system integrity. The tent is fixed and invincible against the wind. Both the Nikon D10 modified microscope and Mac G5 are enveloped in cloth and supported for the cold region. I hope snow keeps falling at this pace, and the temperature will drop. In case it got too cold, I parked my Camry beside the tent as a refuge.
The temperature reached -5°C.
“Okay, Yutaka!”
My assistant, Joey, raised his left hand while looking through the camera and adjusting the distance. I pressed down the shutter. Click.
The snow crystals that I photograph are not placed on a flat platform; I capture the whole landscape of snow crystals falling upon the snow including the background. This is because of my promise to “treat snow crystals as part of the landscape.”
2.
Today, I can’t make up my mind.
Should I complete the papier-mache maquette for my crystal snowflakes today, and leave it here, in the studio in Chong Wu, China, then return to LA? Or should I bring this unfinished maquette to LA with me, finish work there, then send it back to the studio in China? Tomorrow, I leave Xiamen airport for LA via Narita. Another option is to stay a while longer in China, but I want to avoid that if possible, since I will return here in a month anyway. I want to spend this month in LA enjoying daily life with family, painting a lot, or going to ski at Mammoth Mountain.
What is the most important thing in making a crystal sculpture? I think it is a certain sense of “slowness”; it takes a long time to polish after the sculpture is carved. This polishing process makes me nervous. If you are hasty, you absolutely fail. The surface of a crystal is vulnerable to changes in temperature; if you use an electric tool to polish one place for twenty seconds, the temperature on the crystal surface will rise right away and the crystal will crack. This process requires tons of water, and so we had to remodel the studio. We installed a water tank on the rooftop so we could use as much water as needed. Special polishing powder imported from Hong Kong. This powder is probably not special in Japan, but here in Chong Wu, a stone carving town, it is rare and treated as magic.
My team has seven to ten members. One of them, Zhi Ming is a 24-year-old stonemason who has been carving my work since 19 years old. He’s now refining a new marble ski lift in the marble-carving studio. I’m not worried about the piece, as long as he’s working on it. In the next studio, the crystal snowflakes are going through rough cut. Even in this step, we use a lot of water to cool down the pieces. The factory owner, Mr. Jiang, is measuring the new pieces to check the stone price and structure. From my viewpoint he seems to be acting the part of a studio director (in the Chinese style); the fact is that he is working at an astonishingly fast pace. In the end, I decided to take the unfinished pieces to LA with a bit of clay, as a positive resignation. I didn’t want to deal with excess luggage, but I can’t sacrifice the quality of my work.
Crystalline rocks are single crystals. Atoms are arranged in a homogeneous pattern in this mineral. Therefore they are truly transparent. Over the past two years, I had been looking for this homogeneous and transparent mineral, but one that was large enough to use as sculpture. By the way, in China, crystals belong to a type of stone called “beads,” and can be found all over the Eurasian continent. Because the stone markets on the Eurasian continent are closely connected, we looked for crystals from Siberia in the Far East to China, Afghanistan, Iran and throughout Europe. The crystal I’m looking for is larger and more transparent than those magic crystal balls that shamans use to reveal secrets. Eventually, I decided to buy a crystal from the mountains near Heilongjiang. 50cm * 50cm * 14.5cm in size. There are two natural lines inside, but this is the largest crystal that I have found in two years.
Only after meeting many conditions can crystalline rocks be formed in the earth. The temperature is particularly important – it has to drop gradually for a mighty long time. I imagine what a long time this must be, while carving the crystal. Or I imagine the time and the environment to make the crystal. It might be somewhere underground, close to where marble is born, where the temperature is always constant. It’s probably not a space, but a world of density, time and temperature. Even there, gravity plays a part. Somewhere in this world, or somewhere even deeper down into the earth. Maybe it’s hell, or maybe somewhere else.
Soon after I start carving this transparent solid, I fall into an illusion that takes me thousands of years back in a few seconds. It’s scary, but that’s what actually happens. One-centimeter-cube thickness of crystal contains an immeasurable amount of time. That’s what a natural crystal is. Also I can imagine that crystalline rocks are now being formed, everywhere in the world. I make a sculpture of “snow crystals” out of clear mineral. A single crystal of the earth and a single crystal of the sky. In this world, in history, there was never a moment when crystals were not being formed. In the sky that seems to be endless, somewhere in the air, there must be countless snow crystals being born, even now when it hasn’t yet fallen on Mammoth Mountain this year. The crystallization of snow begins when the moisture in the cloud touches dust particles in the air. In a moment, everywhere. All the time, somewhere in the sky, forever.
I enjoy thinking about these things in “slowness” while carving snowflakes from crystal. The never-ending travel of my actual imagination continues in my mind, beyond the completion of the artwork. I am “completely” enjoying the process of production. This “pleasure” is important to me. For “pleasure,” I can endure the sacrifice of effort and exertion. When the work is finished, I am always filled with love.
It won’t be long, about two more months, before the “Mammoth Mountain snowflakes made of crystal” will be completed. But I try not to think ahead. I intentionally confuse “production for art piece” and “art piece for production” and treat the two equally, no matter how strenuous the condition. My daily activities are decided by such thoughts and instincts. In any case, I have to catch a flight tomorrow morning at 10am to return to LA.