In 2011 when Japan was struck by a massive tsunami that devastated most of their eastern coastline it was difficult understand why their coverage of the situation was so minimal. I wondered what they had to hide and why were they so private.

 

About six months after the incident I decided to travel to Japan and experience the damage for myself. Part of my stay was with an American teaching in the city of Sendai. She explained the situation and how Japanese people do not hide or shy away from issues like the tsunami, instead they are very good at taking the negative things that happen in their lives and filing them away as the past.

 

I decided to create several sculptural books in the form of wooden boxes that expressed my visual representation of how Japanese people are able to condense and store past information, that is not readily available, but can be accessed with not too much effort. Each book is elevated roughly 25 inches off of the ground to relate to the average height of the tsunami of 25 feet that hit the Eastern Shores. The legs that support the books are not too study and are used to put emphasis on the fragility of the structures that were near the beach fronts.

 

The books can be removed from the pedestals as well. After opening the boxes you will find a set of small images that when pieced together create a larger picture of the deviation.