I write now from beneath a full moon in Kyoto. I have come to Japan to study its arts and crafts, its people, culture and its history, and its unique and meticulous aesthetic — at once ineffable and yet recognizable, and growing. It has profoundly inspired and informed my work as an artist in each discipline I have undertaken. I carry several questions with me now, alongside the inquiry into the crafts of wood, music, poetry, tea and meditation.
As a multi-disciplined artist, woodcarver, musician and poet, I have been imprinted with the arts of Japan for some time now. Not a student of martial arts or Anime, I was first introduced to the arts of Japan through Zen meditation as a teenager. At the end of my high school years I became ill with serious GI issues and through my journey to heal myself through food, I came across in my research the powerful healing qualities of meditation, guided visualization, and yoga (and the research documentation beginning to emerge at that time). These would be paths and practices I would begin with severe humility. They would be those doorways I could only walk through on my own, the way life often lays heavy work at our feet for only our own sincere undertaking.
My studies of meditation came through this time of challenge and health crisis in my life, where interests and practices truly earn their keep. It is often in crisis that we learn what truly matters to us, and how fragile life truly is.
Through this humbling and intriguing path of studying my own awareness, my own whole body as one big mind, I was also introduced to the arts of Zen. Those creative practices inextricably linked with mindfulness practice — in fact, the arts in Zen are an inevitable response to the human condition and the great mystery of a human birth.
In the practice of Zen, philosophy and dogma continually become obsolete and ineffective, falling away. The arts become centered as the most direct and immediate way of expressing understanding. Simple. Spontaneous. Vital.
These traditions resonated with an artistic vision, an attention and devotion that already bubbled inside of me, and I have been inspired and drawn to the Zen Arts and Japan ever since.
As my life artistically and professionally has developed over the years, I have now found myself at a potent and inviting crossroads.
For those not so familiar with my work, three and a half years ago I was invited to help design a 15,000 sq. ft community art center with numerous teaching studios and a mission of accessible, therapeutic, and community based arts programming. This project has become InterArts in Patterson, NY. In the three years since beginning the InterArts project, and with the support of Community-Based Services as a collaborator and inspired sponsor, the InterArts project has expanded and I have been invited to further design and develop now a new sister art center, InterArts North, in a 14,000 sq. ft repurposed grain barn in Ballston Lake, NY. The InterArts project has also further developed its teaching farm and gardens at Cultivating Dreams Farm in Hopewell Junction, NY, and a newly developing Impact Center for Learning, which will include a state of the art training center and teaching kitchen in Westchester County.
To say all of this together here is a bit unbelievable to me. Alongside this work, I have continued to pursue my own crafts as an independent visual artist, musician, composer, poet, naturalist, and storyteller. I continue my work with my dear friend Biff Mithoefer, at the intersection of Yin Yoga, the body, sensation, storytelling, anatomy, poetry, archetypes, and cross-cultural anthropology. I also have continued my work as core faculty at the Omega Institute, as faculty in meditation, and at the intersection of contemplative and expressive arts.
Lastly, and in a stroke of wonder and delight, over the past year I have been invited to curate the gallery at Lifebridge Sanctuary, a wooded retreat center on 95 acres of the Shawangunk Ridge, on my very Mountain Road in Rosendale, NY. This has included hosting underground artist salons, titled ‘ShapeLeaper’, which explore, support, and cross-pollinate artists and their practices in a container which asks ‘what is the role of the artist in today’s troubled times?’
I have gone where I have been invited, been compelled and romanced by this work, and it has left me swooning. I now curate three galleries (InterArts, InterArts North, and LifeBridge Sanctuary) as well as further developing centers that are artifacts themselves, but are more truly vessels for others to create, connect, and express out from. This has been a blessing and an honor to see these dimensions come to life in my work.
I describe this work now, not to list accomplishments, but to describe the ways the arts have been elevated and deeply invited in my own work. To show how my work has become the creating of safe, inclusive, accessible, and inspiring spaces which emphasize and affirm a shared humanity. In these troubled times, this continual work has been the truth that has given me ground to stand on, and hope to feel as the world turns in increasing conflict and tumult.
In this work designing space, group experience, and art, I have continually returned to the Zen Arts as a fount of truth, invitation, and mystery. Essential. Human. I am continually drawn to the meticulous detail of Japanese art traditions together, and their intentional and elevated status of beauty and craft. Crafting as knowing the world through artifacts which blend nature, knowledge, and devotion.
Yet the arts of Japan are housed within a complicated history of feudal society and modern industrialization. Through my research and preparation for this journey into Japanese art and craft, this history evoked questions of the intersection of these arts traditions and the severe militarization and violence of Japan’s history. My studies continued to seek interesting intersections where the arts served to transmute violence, demilitarize the samurai class, and help center beauty and peace over power in a rapidly modernizing and globalizing nation during the past 200 years.
Here on my travels, amidst the aesthetics, I also carry this question: how can the arts serve to transmute violence and remind us of a shared fate, a shared humanity, and the power of beauty and peace? A heavy question for certain, but I have come to trust the worth of carrying a few of these questions around in my days, if I can bear them.
Here in the last two weeks of my month-long artist tour and residency in Japan I have been exploring the myriad arts practices from wood to calligraphy, music to food, architecture to tea, flower-arranging to garden design. I will soon travel to the Seto Inland Sea to visit the Art Islands and the close of the Setouchi Triennial, which is an overflowing expression of thoughtful art, design, and installation dispersed on three Japanese Islands. As a curator this is invaluable, and a potent experience to inform my work. I will also be staying within the pilgrimage circuit on the island of Shikoku, which is one of many expressions of the fascinating and developed combination of Buddhism and native Shinto religions here. I have already spent time in Tokyo, the Japanese Alps, and now the ancient capital city of Kyoto. The list of artistic dimensions, physical locations, and kindred relations seems to continually grow here, and I am grateful for it. For this beauty, and the natural unsettling that is travel and foreign immersion, has connected me to what will be a special finale to close my residency. A collaborative performance and concert combining my flute with Asian percussion, to live Japanese calligraphy, with cymatic projection. Cymatics is the geometry of sound waves, projected in responsive real time to sound frequencies, creating amazing geometric, mandala-like visual projections to accompany our group exhibition in Tokyo. I have been feeling into the truth of how my woodcarving is more akin to calligraphic mark-making than to detailed representation or sculpture, and so this final performance, titled ‘Earth Line & Primitive Memory” will be a synthesis of mark-making in sound, in sight, and in time.
And yet, upon returning home, I am seeking ways in which I can stay connected to my studies and work here. To produce work that will continue to engage the themes, crafts, and aesthetics I have been encountering in Japan, and work that will continue to explore and support the community arts vocations that have grown in creative spaces with people and disciplines I am passionate about.
In this light, I am determined to create a series of art works in this spirit: “A Shared Humanity - Mightier Than the Sword” will be a limited series of woodcarved panels inspired and drawn forth from my time and studies here in Japan.
The series will be wallpiece artworks, in the similar medium I have worked previously, but will be imbued with the experiences of studying in Japan. Lines, compositions, themes, colors, and aesthetics. Within wood, but also within new influences of culture, design, tradition, and approach.
This is an invitation to support the creation of this body of work, and my greater community arts work I have undertaken in New York and beyond.
Each piece of “A Shared Humanity” will be a 30-inch x 48-inch carved, painted and/or burned solid wooden panels, distilling style and themes from the Zen Arts and Japan back into the my dear medium of woodgrain and pigment. Each piece will be pre-sold for $900, and will give me the ongoing invitation to engage with this personal artistic practice, and the conjunction of my personal and community arts work.
I aim to complete the series over the next 6 months upon returning to the Hudson Valley, completing all works by Summer of 2026.
I have written this and shared it with you now, as you are someone who has appreciated, supported, been inspired by, and seen the value in the artistic and societal work I am engaged in.
Here is how you can support: Pre-purchase and reserve one of these “A Shared Humanity” limited series wood-carved paintings to be designed and sent to you in the coming year.
For those who would like to revisit the work I have already made for reference, you can see my expanded portfolio here:
https://www.ericarcherarts.com/art
For those who are economically curious, I have been selling works of similar size as the pieces in “A Shared Humanity” series (30” x 48”) for at least twice the amount I am pre-selling these for now.
In truth, I am sincerely eager to make this body of work, and want to welcome the invitation, the support, and the premeditated responsibility to complete this work as reflections on my Japanese residency.
I understand it may be precarious to purchase artwork you have yet to see. Unseen and unrehearsed, often how life unfolds, is often what I am eager to create from, but I want to invite you into some of the creative process. I will invite you to cite photos and other inspirations (like those in the A Shared Humanity banner above) through a special page on my website here, to be updated ongoing as my residency comes to a close:
https://www.ericarcherarts.com/asharedhumanityseries
These will be design suggestions, examples, and inspirations from my travels. I will also welcome you to cite other previous works of mine from my portfolio as launch points for new works and departures in this series for you. I hope this provides enough suggestion and inspiration, as well as enough mystery, to keep this series exciting and inspiring of your support.
As I write this, I also feel my fierce independence, and my shyness, both which have gotten me to this place, speaking silently and wanting to avoid this inquiry together. Regardless of whether you would like to support “A Shared Humanity” series, I trust you have found it interesting to hear this update on the dimensions where my work is invited and growing.
Finally, I am catching inspiration to develop a presentation (on Zoom or the like) which shares about my trip — where I have traveled, what I studied, what I researched, how I practiced, and what I encountered in my journey here in Japan. Maybe you would be interested to hear and/or see such a presentation? If so, let me know, and I will continue to sort out how to make this a reality.
In any event, I am deeply grateful for your gracious attention to my work. To the spirit of how I am moving in the world. I thank you for your ongoing friendship, community, and the reflections you offer. Thank you for considering this invitation sincerely, and for taking the time to read this letter. If you know someone else who would be moved or inspired by this work, please pass it on. Regardless, I would love to hear how this letter has landed in your world, and in your heart, and I look forward to the next time our paths can meet.
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With warmth,
Eric