Wabi Sabi art can be utilitarian or strictly aesthetic, i.e. a table or a wall hanging.  It has many facets revolving around one basic idea.  My expression of Wabi Sabi is that I collect pieces of weathered wood,  rusty barbed wire, discarded computer parts that have rusted, discarded metal from old appliances like washing machines used for target practice and shot up with holes.  At the same time juxtaposing this kind of material with something that is still new and shiny like a glossy tile or a crystal, natural or faceted.  Predominantly my Wabi Sabi art only uses something fresh and new as an accent.

 

My first major piece of Wabi Sabi art is called 'The Crux'.  See images of this below.  It is 3' wide and 5' high of a cross-like structure to remind me of Christ's crucifixion.  I used old weathered 2x4's for the basic cross; a shot up piece of metal for the body; a rusty bottom of a toaster or some appliance for the head; rusty barbed wire for the Crown of Thorns; and a piece of flood-plain, desert drift wood for a leg that looks like a large lamb's leg.  

     

Sometimes I have an idea of what I want the Wabi Sabi piece to express and materials come together to form a whole, discarded useless material transformed into elegance through an organic, alchemical process.  Or I have nothing in mind but to take pieces and join them together finding meaning along the way.   For more than 40 years, my predominant direction has been as a painter applying paint to a flat surface, seeking depth in two-dimensions.  Making Wabi Sabi art as an adjunct, no pun intended, allows that part of me that wants to feel and work with the stand-alone three dimensional reality of objects, feeding the piece of me that might want to sculpt something.  I sculpt in pieces of junk.  A Deacon once said to me, "God don't make no junk".  When this same Deacon saw The Crux in a show, she said, "It is elegant. The sum is elegant, but the parts are not."  Wabi Sabi is a great example that there is "no junk" and Wabi Sabi art is an even greater example that the sum is even greater than the parts.  

                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                   Victor Steven Rosenberg

                                                                                                                                   Winter 2018