Artists & Artworks
Eric Tillinghast Water Series #67
Born in Los Angeles in 1974, Eric Tillinghast currently
lives and works in northern California. Since his early
twenties, Tillinghast has worked with water as subject
and medium in his sculptures, installations, and other
projects. He might incorporate water as a puddle resting
on the surface of a steel cube, as the contents of shallow
iron bowls lined up in a vacated industrial space, or as rain
dripping fast from a gridded pattern of pipes into a shallow,
black steel tray. Contrasting the hard industrial surface
of steel with the fluid and translucent nature of water, his
work reminds us of the tension between the natural and
industrial worlds. In his two-dimensional artworks, Tillinghast focuses on water seen from above as it is contained
in swimming pools and lakes.
over the falls instead of in a spot from which they could
view the falls. Wright integrated his design with nature
by cantilevering reinforced concrete balconies over the
stream. The home is now a museum.
Katsushika Hokusai Pilgrims at Kirifuri Waterfall on
Mount Kurokami in Shimotsuke Province
Katsushika Hokusai was born in 1760 in Edo (now Tokyo)
Japan, and began painting when he was about six years old.
He studied and worked within the tradition of ukiyo-e, a
school of printmaking that featured scenes from “the float-
ing world,” or what we would call everyday life. Hokusai
eventually began to focus on landscapes, completing his
most famous work, Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji, in the
1820s. He created detailed images of flowers and birds,
and a series of prints that showcased the many beautiful
waterfalls within the Provinces. Hokusai’s humans appear
small in comparison to the magnificent falls and other
features of the landscape, but their inclusion suggests the
harmonious relationship we have
with nature.
Emphasizing the importance of
close observation of nature and the
time it takes to become skilled,
the artist said, “At seventy-three,
I began to grasp the structures
of birds and beasts, insects and
fish, and of the way plants grow.
If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better
by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have
penetrated to their essential nature.” He went on to predict
what he might accomplish if he were to live beyond one
hundred years, but Hokusai died in 1849, at the age of 89.
“My primary interests are in
our perceptions of water as a
natural element and resource,
and creating an experience that
examines those perceptions”
—Eric Tillinghast
Frank Lloyd Wright Kaufmann House
Recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as the “greatest American architect of all time,”
Frank Lloyd Wright was well known
in his lifetime. In addition to
designing houses, offices, churches,
schools, libraries, bridges, museums,
and many other kinds of buildings,
he often designed the furnishings for
his structures as well. He had strong
views about design and society, and
authored books and articles in which
he expressed his many ideas.
Wright talked about his inspiration from the natural
world, admonishing his apprentices to “study nature,
love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
Kaufmann House, or Fallingwater, was designed in 1936
for Pittsburgh department-store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann
and his family and is one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most
acclaimed buildings. The waterfall had been the family’s
favorite picnic and swimming site before they commissioned Wright to build their vacation home. They were
surprised when the architect wanted to position the house
Shigemori Mirei Tofuku-ji Hondo
People have been creating gardens like Shigemori Mirei’s
Tofuku-ji Hondo for more than a thousand years. Rep-
resenting a balance between nature and human-made
beauty, the purpose of the Zen garden is to provide a place
for meditation and contemplation. While the
garden does not include ponds or streams,
its stone arrangements, white sand or gravel,
moss, and pruned trees symbolize landscapes
one might find in nature. In these dry, or
karesansui, gardens, the sand or gravel sym-
bolizes the sea, ocean, rivers, or lakes. In
many Zen gardens, this area is raked into a
pattern representing waves or rippling water.
The act of raking and re-raking the sand can
contribute to a person’s concentration and
meditation.
Stone or shaped shrub arrangements symbolize mountains, islands, boats, and even
people, while moss covering the ground is
used to create forested “land.” It is often said
that the best way to view karesansui gardens
is seated and from a single vantage point.
