Wabi-Sabi: The Japanese Approach to Design and Aesthetics

This new online workshop with photographic artist Richard Martin is about looking at the everyday, the commonplace, and finding magic in the ordinary, unconventional, humble, rustic, imperfect, or decayed—a reminder that nothing in life, or design, is perfect. It is about appreciating the Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi, finding it, or seeing it in things that already exist in the visual world around us. This approach encourages one to develop an intuitive way of seeing that involves becoming aware of the moments that make life rich and paying attention to the simple pleasures that can be overshadowed by the chaos and excess of our consumerist society. In wabi-sabi, echoes of the past are combined with the quiet poetry of abandonment.

Richard examines a body of work characterized by various aesthetic concepts, incorporating unpretentious, understated simplicity, ambiguous, ordinary, and elegant imperfection. Over four online sessions, there are group discussions, assignments, and image reviews, utilizing some of these wabi-sabi qualities as themes to find beauty in everyday life. Document flowers past their prime, visit junkyards, explore the underside of sailboats during dry dock, torn posters, and alleyways. In nature, explore organic texture, pursuing an unhindered natural process.

The workshop is concerned primarily with an exchange of ideas, experiments, and investigations into the readiness to accept things as they are, resulting in new directions and concepts for the viewer. It aims to challenge the celebrated ideas of perfection and beauty and introduce new possibilities. It provides both aesthetic exploration of individual creativity and technical experimentation with a renewed method of working.