Center for the Arts’ summer exhibition returns Jiro Okura’s work to the landscape that shaped it
The Center for the Arts’ summer exhibition features the work of late Japanese minimalist sculptor Jiro Okura, reconnecting his work with the Appalachian landscape that shaped a significant period of his career.
“A Line of Breath Between Wood and Light” opens with a reception on Thursday, June 4, from 5-7 p.m. in the center’s Grand Lobby. On view through Saturday, Aug. 22, across all galleries, the exhibition and all related events are free and open to the public.
In the summer of 1990, Okura traveled from Kyoto, Japan, to Southwest Virginia, where eight black walnut trees from the Jefferson National Forest had been selected for him. The trees were blessed in a Shinto ceremony before they were cut, a ritual honoring the living spirit within them before becoming art. From that wood, Okura and a community of students, artists, and neighbors built “Mountain Lake Screen Tachi.” Painted and gilded, the 16 towering folding screens once stretched more than 100 feet across an Appalachian hillside, forming a movable wall between cultures, nature and form, and presence and disappearance.
This exhibition brings together eight of those screens alongside works on paper, sculpture, and installation that extend the same meditative practice across materials and scale. Large sumi ink drawings register branches, leaves, and other fragments of the world through thousands of repeated brushstrokes, leaving their forms behind as absences.
In “Souls on Garbage” (1998), that same discipline of repeated line moves into three dimensions, unifying discarded objects across a painted ground and transforming the residue of consumer life into something closer to sacred assemblage. A small group of carved camphor wood sculptures from the early 1980s returns to the origin of this practice: the repeated cut of the blade, the surface as bodily chanting, and wood approached not as inert material, but as a living presence.
Born in Tokyo and long active in Kyoto, Okura developed a practice shaped by Shinto reverence for the living spirit within natural materials and a Buddhist understanding of impermanence. He moved fluidly between drawing, sculpture, and installation, guided less by composition than by attention: the repeated cut of a blade, the sweep of a brush, a simple action performed again and again as a form of bodily chanting.
Okura was a guest artist at the Mountain Lake Workshop, a series of collaborative, community-based art projects rooted in the customs and resources of the Appalachian region. Founded by Ray Kass, professor emeritus of art in Virginia Tech’s School of Visual Arts in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design, the program has produced collaborative works between guest artists and members of the local community surrounding Mountain Lake in Giles County.
At Mountain Lake, Okura found not only a landscape whose scale and stillness resonated with his work, but a collaborative way of working that expanded it. Through the shared experiments here, he opened his practice to chance — to the encounter between object and mark, material and gesture, individual action and collective process.
The works arise from that exchange between artist, place, and community, yet remain unmistakably his: quiet, rigorous, and open. They ask not for interpretation so much as presence, like the sustained attention Okura brought to every cut, every mark, every gesture.
Okura’s participation in the Mountain Lake Workshop from 1990-98 is considered among the most poetic and conceptually nuanced contributions in the program’s history. His work incorporates natural forces such as gravity, wind, light, and found materials, reflecting a deep reverence for nature and a commitment to imperfection and process.
Related events
Artist Rude Graves of Bird Block Studios will present two live woodworking demonstrations inspired by the methods of Jiro Okura on Wednesday, July 15, at 3 and 4 p.m. on the Patricia Buckley Moss Lawn. Working through repetitive motion and automatic drawing, Graves will explore the meditative practice at the heart of Okura’s process — one in which the maker enters a state of focused stillness, free from extraneous thought.
The demonstrations trace Okura’s three working methods — carving, drawing, and gold leaf application — as seen in his work, “Mountain Lake Screen Tachi.” The events are free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Take a deep dive into the exhibition with the center’s monthly noontime curator tour, “Beyond the Frame.” Join the center’s Director of Visual Arts Brian Holcombe on the second Thursday of every month. Starting promptly at noon in the Grand Lobby, the tours are free and open to the public.
Holcombe will provide expert insight and contextualization, offer behind-the-scenes glimpses into the acquisition and installation processes, and answer participant questions. Learn more about the artists featured in the galleries and their works, including historical and thematic contexts, and be inspired to look at art and the creative process in new ways.
There will be three tours offered for the center’s summer exhibition on June 11, July 9, and Aug. 6.
Visiting the galleries
Located at 190 Alumni Mall, the Center for the Arts’ galleries are open on Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Parking is available in the North End Parking Garage on Turner Street. When not staffed for a special event, visitors may park in the garage by taking a ticket at entry and paying with Visa or Mastercard upon exit. Find more parking details online.
If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Jonathan Boulter at least 10 days prior to the event at 540-231-5300 or email jboulter@vt.edu during regular business hours.
