California is a hotbed for aficionados of suiseki -- the Asian practice of appreciating naturally formed stones as art
The phrase "stone cold" holds no meaning for Felix Rivera, who was so hot one day for a particular stone covered by 6 inches of the Eel River that he broke his ankle trying to fetch it.
"The ankle snapped and I was all alone, so I crawled out on my hands and knees," says Rivera, 66.
Seven screws and five years later, a tone of wistfulness still seeps into his voice as he remembers. His effort, he seems to think, may have been worthwhile.
"After I got out, I looked back down at it," he says. "It was a nice stone."
The river kept that one but continues to yield other prized pieces of serpentine and jasper to Rivera and the field collectors who gravitate to his California Suiseki Society and also the older San Francisco Suiseki Kai and oldest Kashu Suiseki Kai of Palo Alto, all of which are dedicated to the ancient Chinese, Korean and especially Japanese appreciation of naturally formed stones as works of art.
Rivera, Puerto Rican by way of New York City, now living in Albany and teaching social work at San Francisco State University, has been spreading a gospel that he couldn't even translate until he discovered suiseki at a Los Angeles bonsai show in the 1960s. The stones there didn't leave him cold. Formed by and shaped by the forces of oceans, streams, sands and winds, they evoked mountains and rivers and islands, and stirred a passion that would lead him to write two books, countless articles and a Web site full of material on suiseki.
"Well, this is America, right? The salad?" Rivera says. "I get such a kick out of it when people hear me talking the way I do about suiseki and they think I'm Japanese -- except for my name."
Well, there are some Japanese who believe that to be a suiseki (soo-ee- SECK-ee), a stone must come from Japan. Rivera points out that the word means "water stone." His preferred interpretation, based on his findings: "A suiseki is a suiseki because it evokes certain powers of suggestion in the viewer."
Like art, suiseki can seem abstract or realistic, beautiful or ugly. Where one may delight in a stone that models a many-layered mountain range glistening in the sun, another eye may stray down the river to a flatter, darker stone evoking a cloud-covered plateau.
Beautiful? Ugly? These terms are not among a long list of rules and criteria followed by traditional Japanese teachers of suiseki. The Web site www.suiseki.com, for instance, details dozens of classifications for scenic landscape stones, from the mountain stones to the sand dune stones and every geological feature in between. Then there are classifications by color, surface pattern and place of origin.
Most places of origin listed on the Web site are in Japan, but others include the Eel in Northern California, Murphys (Calaveras County) and the Ligurian Alps of Italy. The 65-member California Suiseki Society's annual exhibition last month showcased stones from all three of the Western locations, including two limestone suiseki that Rivera brought back from Italy.
"There is a Western influence, which we cannot avoid because we're here," Rivera says. "There is a Japanese influence, which in a way we can avoid, because we're not in Japan, unless we choose to embrace it."
In California, for instance, stones tend to have a more bulbous quality and often have extraneous growths that need to be cut, a practice frowned upon by some in traditional suiseki circles. They also run larger than the suiseki in Japan and contain a larger range of colors, including jaspers and jadeites. The dramatically colored serpentine stone of the West and the unique Murphys stone, mostly limestone with quartz inclusions, have come to be prized by Japanese collectors.
"Northern California is really the treasure spot of suiseki," says Hideko Metaxas, longtime member of the San Francisco club and friend of Rivera. "Other states have rivers, too, but they have restrictions on taking stones, or the quality of the stone is not suitable for suiseki. It just happens that Northern California stones are similar to Japanese suiseki in hardness, color and shape."
Metaxas' club held its meetings in Japanese for many years before going bilingual recently, but she says the club continues to adhere to traditional Japanese suiseki rules while Rivera's group, she says, "is more open to your own adaptation."
Rivera's group does embrace the Japanese school of suiseki's traditional, uniquely Asian values, which include shibui (a sort of restrained elegance), yugan (a veiled magnificence) and, especially, wabi-sabi -- "the imperfect as beautiful, the ugly as beautiful, an appreciation of impermanence," Rivera says.
And so, on a typical spring trip to some secret spot on the Eel or the Klamath, the field collector who finds a new treasure shows it to a companion, who at first critiques the stone's technical qualities and then begins to look at what some might describe as its magic, others might find as meaning.
A few of the stones make the trip back to the Bay Area and then find a place on a deck or windowsill, where the collector can watch it from various angles and determine whether to cut it and mount it on a stand, called a daiza, or, if it represents an island, on a water tray, called a suiban.
By now, the stone has come to life. And the collector will caress the piece over tonight's episode of "Law and Order," naturally enhancing its patina with the oils from the hands.
"Aesthetically, it's fascinating to bring a stone home and try to get a suiseki out of it," says Frank Mathers, who joined the club almost 10 years ago. "There are 10 million stones out there. You sort of stop as you see something that looks good. If you really like it, you bring it home. But I probably only have 20 to 25 stones that represent what I consider to be suiseki. I have a yard full of about 20 stones I had cut, then decided they weren't worth making a base for, then another two to three hundred I decided were not even worth cutting."
Mather displayed one of the most talked-about stones last month, mounted on a bowl-shaped base rather than the usual flat daiza and including a figure of a monk.
"I found it at the water's edge at the Eel River," he says. "It weighed about 70 pounds, so you'd think twice about schlepping it out of there, so it was unusual from the beginning. I brought it home to play with it and figure out what I was doing with it.
"What I saw was a stream across the top, a surface of water with ripples through it. Putting a person on it gave a sense of scale to it."
Mathers' suiseki and presentation provided plenty of conversational fodder for club members, and that was a fine thing for this group of people who share a soft spot for hard rock.
The phrase "stone cold" holds no meaning for Felix Rivera, who was so hot one day for a particular stone covered by 6 inches of the Eel River that he broke his ankle trying to fetch it.
"The ankle snapped and I was all alone, so I crawled out on my hands and knees," says Rivera, 66.
Seven screws and five years later, a tone of wistfulness still seeps into his voice as he remembers. His effort, he seems to think, may have been worthwhile.
"After I got out, I looked back down at it," he says. "It was a nice stone."
The river kept that one but continues to yield other prized pieces of serpentine and jasper to Rivera and the field collectors who gravitate to his California Suiseki Society and also the older San Francisco Suiseki Kai and oldest Kashu Suiseki Kai of Palo Alto, all of which are dedicated to the ancient Chinese, Korean and especially Japanese appreciation of naturally formed stones as works of art.
Rivera, Puerto Rican by way of New York City, now living in Albany and teaching social work at San Francisco State University, has been spreading a gospel that he couldn't even translate until he discovered suiseki at a Los Angeles bonsai show in the 1960s. The stones there didn't leave him cold. Formed by and shaped by the forces of oceans, streams, sands and winds, they evoked mountains and rivers and islands, and stirred a passion that would lead him to write two books, countless articles and a Web site full of material on suiseki.
"Well, this is America, right? The salad?" Rivera says. "I get such a kick out of it when people hear me talking the way I do about suiseki and they think I'm Japanese -- except for my name."
Well, there are some Japanese who believe that to be a suiseki (soo-ee- SECK-ee), a stone must come from Japan. Rivera points out that the word means "water stone." His preferred interpretation, based on his findings: "A suiseki is a suiseki because it evokes certain powers of suggestion in the viewer."
Like art, suiseki can seem abstract or realistic, beautiful or ugly. Where one may delight in a stone that models a many-layered mountain range glistening in the sun, another eye may stray down the river to a flatter, darker stone evoking a cloud-covered plateau.
Beautiful? Ugly? These terms are not among a long list of rules and criteria followed by traditional Japanese teachers of suiseki. The Web site www.suiseki.com, for instance, details dozens of classifications for scenic landscape stones, from the mountain stones to the sand dune stones and every geological feature in between. Then there are classifications by color, surface pattern and place of origin.
Most places of origin listed on the Web site are in Japan, but others include the Eel in Northern California, Murphys (Calaveras County) and the Ligurian Alps of Italy. The 65-member California Suiseki Society's annual exhibition last month showcased stones from all three of the Western locations, including two limestone suiseki that Rivera brought back from Italy.
"There is a Western influence, which we cannot avoid because we're here," Rivera says. "There is a Japanese influence, which in a way we can avoid, because we're not in Japan, unless we choose to embrace it."
In California, for instance, stones tend to have a more bulbous quality and often have extraneous growths that need to be cut, a practice frowned upon by some in traditional suiseki circles. They also run larger than the suiseki in Japan and contain a larger range of colors, including jaspers and jadeites. The dramatically colored serpentine stone of the West and the unique Murphys stone, mostly limestone with quartz inclusions, have come to be prized by Japanese collectors.
"Northern California is really the treasure spot of suiseki," says Hideko Metaxas, longtime member of the San Francisco club and friend of Rivera. "Other states have rivers, too, but they have restrictions on taking stones, or the quality of the stone is not suitable for suiseki. It just happens that Northern California stones are similar to Japanese suiseki in hardness, color and shape."
Metaxas' club held its meetings in Japanese for many years before going bilingual recently, but she says the club continues to adhere to traditional Japanese suiseki rules while Rivera's group, she says, "is more open to your own adaptation."
Rivera's group does embrace the Japanese school of suiseki's traditional, uniquely Asian values, which include shibui (a sort of restrained elegance), yugan (a veiled magnificence) and, especially, wabi-sabi -- "the imperfect as beautiful, the ugly as beautiful, an appreciation of impermanence," Rivera says.
And so, on a typical spring trip to some secret spot on the Eel or the Klamath, the field collector who finds a new treasure shows it to a companion, who at first critiques the stone's technical qualities and then begins to look at what some might describe as its magic, others might find as meaning.
A few of the stones make the trip back to the Bay Area and then find a place on a deck or windowsill, where the collector can watch it from various angles and determine whether to cut it and mount it on a stand, called a daiza, or, if it represents an island, on a water tray, called a suiban.
By now, the stone has come to life. And the collector will caress the piece over tonight's episode of "Law and Order," naturally enhancing its patina with the oils from the hands.
"Aesthetically, it's fascinating to bring a stone home and try to get a suiseki out of it," says Frank Mathers, who joined the club almost 10 years ago. "There are 10 million stones out there. You sort of stop as you see something that looks good. If you really like it, you bring it home. But I probably only have 20 to 25 stones that represent what I consider to be suiseki. I have a yard full of about 20 stones I had cut, then decided they weren't worth making a base for, then another two to three hundred I decided were not even worth cutting."
Mather displayed one of the most talked-about stones last month, mounted on a bowl-shaped base rather than the usual flat daiza and including a figure of a monk.
"I found it at the water's edge at the Eel River," he says. "It weighed about 70 pounds, so you'd think twice about schlepping it out of there, so it was unusual from the beginning. I brought it home to play with it and figure out what I was doing with it.
"What I saw was a stream across the top, a surface of water with ripples through it. Putting a person on it gave a sense of scale to it."
Mathers' suiseki and presentation provided plenty of conversational fodder for club members, and that was a fine thing for this group of people who share a soft spot for hard rock.
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posted by Davor Novakovic @ Wednesday, July 13, 2005
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