It is always a wonder how people create art in ways that one cannot even dream of. One such outstanding artist is Yuki Kawae, who has gained fame for his Zen Gardens that he creates with the help of mini rakes on white sand.
It all started with Kawae’s finding ways to get rid of his worries and anxieties. He turned to the garden and started tending to a small fiddle-leaf plant. As he watched it grow, he realized how a simple act of tending to a houseplant can alleviate his blues. This prompted him to create Yuki Kawae Zen Garden and there was no looking back for him.
Kawae’s first attempt was to create a dining table-sized Zen Garden that could fit in his apartment. This was no run-of-the-mill garden, but a unique creation of his fertile mind. The concept was simple. With pieces of rocks and other objects as a starting point, he used his handcrafted wide-toothed prongs and dense rakes to create Yuki Kawae sand art consisting of patterns on the beds of white sand. His videos show how smoothly he marks the patterns on the white sand bed using his tools.
For Kawae, the mere act of forming patterns, intersecting loops, fractals, and other organic shapes is a therapeutic experience in these pandemic times. It certainly provides mental peace in a time of chaos and unpredictability. They do the same for those viewing his videos. Little wonder his creations went instantly viral on social media platforms.
Kawae’s Zen Gardens are by no means easy to create. It is his steady hand and his passion for precision that makes it possible to meticulously plow the smooth surface of the white sand bed with his rakes to form clean and artistic furrows. He has certainly mastered the art of precise movement which is both minimal and deliberate in execution.
Kawae shares on thiscolossal.com about the transient nature of his Zen Gardens, “All the Zen Garden patterns aren’t permanent, and they get erased to start a new one. It’s temporary like many things in life. It taught me about what not to overthink, as what I’m stressing about may also be temporary.”
Currently, Kawae’s works are only available as videos posted on social media platforms. However, his fond desire is to create a life-size Zen Garden, together with vegetation and his abstract paintings, in a botanical space.
Yuki Kawae artist enjoys a viewership of over 434,000 followers on Instagram alone.
Yuki Kawae
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