\Upon returning from Japan in late
July, Okura began working with about 60 members of the local
community over what would turn out to be a seven-week period to
complete the project. While intentionally exerting some control
over them, he gave the participants a specific number of physical
operations to perform on the boards after they had been glued;
these operations, which each participant could perform in a
manner and location he or she judged appropriate, included
planing, chiseling, gouging, drilling, and sanding. Carrying out
these repetitive operations using both modern power tools and
ancient Japanese hand tools, the participants slowly gained an
appreciation for Okura’s own working methods and his
acceptance of indeterminacy and accidental effects. The length of
time involved in laboriously working the wood with hand tools and
small power tools also gave the participants a feel for the
wood’s natural aspects, its randomness, and its material
substance.
Okura believes that the repetitiveness of the work was a way to
get beyond pre-conceptions into a more random mode of working, a
mode that could be done “without mind,” (i.e., without
total conscious control and planning). Doing something over and
over was, for Okura, a kind of bodily (rather than verbal)
“chanting” that induces a meditative state and clears
the mind so that one can find the universe that’s inside
oneself, the artistic spirit that will create the work.45
As the participants worked on the project, they came to
understand how the creation of a work of art entailed a dialogue
among many forces; their individual and combined actions could be
seen as a kind of dialogue at the personal and communal levels.
The desire for control through the use of tools and the
resistance of the physical properties of the material could be
seen as a dialogue between the “self within” and the
“world outside.” As part of the creative process,
acceptance of this dialogue between the “universe
within” and the “universe outside” is to
acknowledge the existence of an individual self and a
collaborative self that are fundamental concepts for any sense of
community.
