animation tea bowl

Today, the benefits of meditation — exemplified by mindfulness — are drawing attention. In an age of ceaseless information overload, people thirst for stillness of mind.

Tea was brought from China by Zen monks, and its ties to Zen run deep.
The chemical colors lend this piece — presented as a tea bowl — a sense of unease, while drawing the viewer into a psychedelic world. The "gradation," meanwhile, seems to suggest that this eerie world lies somewhere between consciousness and the unconscious.

In the tea ceremony, there is a sequence of movements in which the tea bowl is lifted directly by hand, rotated, and then drunk from.
Through this motion, the illustration drawn on the inside of the tea bowl unfolds like an animation. The tea bowl is shaped entirely by hand, using the "tebineri" technique rather than the wheel, retaining the trace of handwork. And what is depicted is, fittingly, the motion of the character's own "hand".

This work, which dramatizes the erotic act of "touching" within a psychedelic world, can also be seen as a visual expression of meditation itself — akin to mindfulness, an act of driving away distracting thoughts by concentrating on what is right in front of you, here and now.