DACMan

The rice was planted two different times in front of the villa this season with some fields being harvested a few weeks before the others. The harvested areas are being gleaned by huge squadrons of ducks, while the rest of the rice is still ripening and awaiting the scythe.  For some reason this season there are no morning bird-chasers out in the fields, shouting, banging garbage can lids, and waving flags on long poles to chase away the wild birds who steal the precious rice. While the bird-chasers make a good story, the noise disturbs my morning contemplation of the universe, so I’m grateful for the break in that rice field routine.

The morning remains quiet…until the ducks are sent out on their daily sortie. The ducks’ performance varies minute to minute, from military precision to quacking chaos.  They line up in ranks and charge over the rice field terrace walls to conquer new territory, screaming their unlikely battle cry.  Once the field is secured, quiet descends as they get down to the serious task-at-hand of eating fallen rice from the muddy soup the fields have become. They eat and they contribute to the fertility of the fields in almost equal measure. The ducks’ by-product is the reason for their existence in the farmer’s eyes. That and duck soup or grilled sate the family will enjoy sometime in the future.

With enough territory conquered and explored for the day, the ducks again gather back into formation and march along the foot wide rice field dikes on their way to the duck-barracks for some quiet quacking until dark, some shut eye, and the chance to do it all over again tomorrow, if they’re lucky.

On my first morning in Kyoto I walked into an 800-year-old temple garden. When confronted by the precision of elegantly raked sand, vivid mounds of spring-green moss, and 400-year old windswept pines, I stood stock still, deeply touched, and unable to move forward. I’d found perfection. In this garden, man and nature merged to create a simple, absolute gift. This was one of those rare moments when thought utterly disappears and inexplicable joy takes its place.

Tears welled up and spilled down my face: “I’m home!” These were my first thoughts when the sweet shock of ecstasy faded and my thoughts returned. This experience was what I might imagine stepping through the gates of heaven would feel like.

The sensation of tears drying on my cheeks reminded me I was in a public
garden, so I moved through the next gate and stepped aside for a group of high
school kids taking photos of themselves, each other, and almost incidentally, the garden, with frenetic goodwill. They were sweet to watch and I enjoyed the replay of memories that surfaced from my teens. Having sensed another wave of home/heaven emotion coming my way, I scanned the garden for a spot to hide and let the beauty sink in.

I try but can’t understand the unbalanced balance of the Japanese aesthetic, the seemingly effortless perfection that took 700 years of constant attention to create. Nature, so carefully managed and controlled, became perfectly natural. My thoughts were again forgotten as a group of multicolored koi swam past me and under a small, arched, 600-year-old stone bridge, only to disappear quickly around a bend in the stream.

(Below is an excerpt from a letter I wrote home to America while I was in Japan in early March 2011, a day before the earthquake and tsunami hit)

Japan, at last, I’ve come home (to you). As I walk the streets, visit galleries, warehouses, and auctions, I feel I know these gardens, and temples. I get chills of awe and recognition hourly. As I wander though a 700-year-old temple garden,  I’m stopped in my tracks by a flash of sunlight filtered though the bare trees landing on a bed of moss so green it glows. Tigers come alive for me on a 200-year-old folding screen. Temple bells ring long and true. I’m home.

At a bank I stop to cash some US dollars into Yen. The young clerks never walk; they trot from one part of the bank to another, even from one desk to another. The trot has an energetic, alert, graceful feel to it, alive, not rushed. It makes me smile. A small spark of joy is lit, leaving a sweet memory. I’m out of the bank, Yen in hand, in a mere twenty minutes.

Rhett (my main contact in Japan and the reason I can be here) took me to an auction today. In his 20 years of auctions in Japan, he has never taken anyone else. Having gone today, I understand why. I’m really happy and grateful for that experience. I’ll write more about that later. Working with Rhett is remarkably easy. It’s as if we have been working together for years. No worries, no crossed messages, just an ease of going through each day together, enjoying the same things and working with the same challenges. What a gift.

Strangers have been overwhelmingly generous to me. When we are out buying, often prices are half what Rhett would have expected. I think people sense my love. We walked into a junk/antique shop today owned by an old friend of Rhett’s. After looking for half an hour and buying a few good pieces at good prices, I found on a table in the back of the shop, a very small, wooden folk art animal/toy that appeared to be about a hundred years old. I wanted to ask about it, but the owner and Rhett were outside talking. I held the toy for a minute and thought, “If I were to be given a gift, this would be it.”

It was an idle thought because that kind of gift giving is unusual in this situation in Japan. It happens frequently in Indonesia, but not here.  I put the toy back and wandered through the shop until the owner came back in. A few minutes later, as I was pawing through a stack of kimonos, the owner touched my arm and held out a small wooden toy to me and said, “Gift.”  It was the same toy I’d held and wished for only a few minutes earlier.

Of the thousands of objects in the shop, she chose that piece as a gift. Perfectly in tune, that gift was followed by a string of other gifts, a copper hibachi, Japanese dolls in glass cases and more. Rhett pulled me aside and asked: “What’s with the gifts, man?” I said, “Just a past life connection, it’s OK.”

I don’t understand what took me so long to get here. The Japanese aesthetic, the beauty, the off-balance balance, and a hundred everyday nuances touch me. This is a culture I know I will never truly understand yet it feels so easy, so natural to me. Japan’s everyday rhythms match my own. I bow and bow again and am happy to be bowing to others. I want to honor each person whom I meet. Our bows to each other do just that, and more…

Be well.

Hi Folks,

The weeks fly by, yet even last month seems like a year ago. Life is full of challenges and fun, projects and beauty. My internal 2011 clock is suspended when I travel. Days, dates, and even seasons slip by almost unnoticed as I explore and enjoy the diverse cultures of Bali, Thailand, Laos, Montana, Japan, San Diego, and Bali again.

For years I’ve waited for the right opportunity to go to Japan. My patience was rewarded in early March with a cultural buying trip to Kyoto. It was a profoundly moving experience for me, due both to my experience of Japan and the chance timing of being there during the tsunami. While I was logistically unaffected by the tsunami, the emotional and psychological effects were felt around the world. Life went on, but the streets in Kyoto were empty in the evening as people absorbed the magnitude of the destruction, staying home with their families in front of the TV. The Japanese people displayed a level of cultural solidarity and personal responsibility in the face of unimaginable devastation that perhaps could only happen in Japan. While no culture is without flaws and foibles, my experience of the Japanese, both before and after the tsunami, was one of honor, extraordinary personal restraint, and respect. That’s something for us to emulate as we fly through our busy lives, sometimes making the mistake of thinking we are all that really matters in the universe.

Our July show and party highlight the truly amazing arts and artifacts of Japan I collected to share with you. In this show, we are hoping to not only impress you with stunningly beautiful furniture, craft, and art, but also present a culture as it existed 100 or 150 years ago. While we are by no means experts in all things Japanese, I’m sure you will be enthralled with what you see in this new collection. The arts and crafts of Japan are as subtle as they are profound. The essence of each piece surfaces as one gives more and more time to looking at treasures such as an iron teapot, a tansu chest, or a folding screen.

Please join us for our Opening Party and Show: Japan, a Culture of Quality, on July 28th from 6:00 to 9:00PM.  We promise to provide beauty and inspiration, amazing food and great drinks, live music, demonstrations of Japanese arts and crafts, and great people to share this memorable evening with.  Please feel free to bring a friend or two!
Once again, thank you for being a part of our lives and our adventure.  A new container from Bali and Indonesia also arrives in early August, filled with things unimagined and joyfully beautiful.  Do stop in and chat with us any time.

With gratitude and warmth,

and the David Alan Staff

After the opening of the “Take 99″ show, featuring nearly 100 decorated elephants made by Balinese people from all walks of life, I knew on my return to Bali I would be handing out the prize money to the eight winners.  Simply asking these people to stop by and pick up an envelope with cash felt empty, given the community-nature of this culture.  So many people took their time and energy to create beautiful elephants, I knew the acknowledgment needed to be public and include a lasting award.  To that end, I reserved a beautiful Balinese restaurant for the evening and invited the winners and their friends to a buffet dinner and award ceremony.  The laminated award had a photo of each person’s winning elephant and a note of appreciation.  After dinner, tea and desserts, Kadek MC’d the presentation, as few present spoke English.  Each award was presented with the prize envelope and the David Alan Collection newsletter about the elephant show in America, and a photo of the acceptance of the prize.  The winners, both male and female, 19-54 years old, were more thrilled with the award and the public recognition than the cash. Each person somehow sensed the plaque on the wall would last longer and mean more than the envelope in their pocket.  While the cash prizes may have been the initial motivation, the award on the wall will last a lifetime.
It was a sweet, beautiful evening that conveyed appreciation to everyone who participated in the contest and acknowledgment to the winners for excellent work.  I’m thankful to the hundreds of people who worked together to make this show and opening party a reality.  It was a great chapter in the history of David Alan Collection.

As the carvings were hung for the opening of the show, “The Studio by David Alan,” I was elated to find how beautiful they really are.  In the rough Bali studio where the pieces were carved and re-carved by the craftsmen sitting on the terracotta floor, it was impossible to know if their magic would come alive.

It is strange for me to walk through the show and be touched by what we created.  The pieces are completely mine, step-by-step, and not mine all at the same time.  I can’t take credit for them.  They were a gift.

I spent years preparing for this show.  I worked untold hours with and without the carvers to make this happen, but I stand in front of these works of art and wonder where they came from.  After spending an hour walking through the show, a friend captured this feeling so well when she said, “The muse was generous with you.”  What a sweet perception of all that happened.  If the muse gives gifts, how can credit be taken?

This show matters more to me than any show or any work I’ve ever done.  It matters because creating and sharing beauty, awe, inspiration and wonder matters.  The deeper it penetrates individually and collectively, the better for all. If these works from “The Studio” touch and inspire, that’s a good thing.

Erosion is perhaps nature’s most breathtakingly beautiful phenomenon. On a grand scale it has given me my favorite haunts, the canyons and sculpted rocks of Zion, the cliffs and hoodoos of Bryce, the vast landscape and intimate corners of Grand Staircase, Escalante, and the unfathomable Grand Canyon. Only wind and water have been at work there. Not one year in the past thirty years has passed without my taking at least one soul-reviving visit to these monumental testaments to forces beyond imagination which were created over periods of time that I cannot begin to comprehend. I am brought to my knees with awe and joy in the presence of such majesty. I am reminded of my true, minuscule importance. I need and welcome that reminder.

On my David Alan travels I constantly seek pieces that show nature’s work of erosion on man made objects. Once found, we may give these pieces a nudge with a bit of sand paper or wax to enhance their beauty but they stand on their own. A discarded teak mortar gains beauty over time when left out to weather. A boat hull once again becomes more wood that boat.

In this show, “Erosion, Nature’s Impact on Man’s Creations,” we present a very special collection of man-made, naturally eroded objects, originally sculpted from wood and stone. Whether it’s a cast iron anchor from a Chinese ship sunk 300 yrs ago, a Dayak ironwood sculpture from Borneo that has weathered for 150 years, or a well-worn 200 year old stone ancestral statue from Sumatra Island, each piece in the show has been enhanced and mystified by the work of erosion. Only creation and erosion persist, in their endless cycles.

Please join us in appreciating these objects touched by both man and nature when you visit David Alan Collection from September 11th to October 7th.  We invite you to imagine and envision a unique piece of history in your home or garden.