Shibumi by Georg Schmerholz
Amongst all the Jade Aficionados, including miners, hunters, dealers, collectors and carvers, the last group is afforded perhaps the best chance of truly feeling and experiencing, on a deeper level, the magic and mystery of Jade.
I would like to share an experience I had while finishing a sculpture named Shibumi, as I was preparing for the Second Annual Jade Art Now Show 2008 at Antiquities, Plus… Gallery in Tucson, AZ.
Shibumi Sculpture From Different Perspectives
Sculpture has been my life-long passion and dedication, and I had worked with just about all media with the exception of jade, when in 1993 I was given the assignment to carve the 7’ tall jade Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, out of the same 30+ ton boulder, to be the companion to the largest Jade Buddha in the world, which now rests in a temple on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand; my first ever jade sculpture!
After 3 month of working there, my contract was breached and I returned to Vancouver, BC, my home at the time, with a ‘bad taste in my mouth’ and disappointed that I could not finish the statue.
Although I knew at some point I would be creating with jade again, it took 14 years before I returned to the “Stone of Heaven”. I would buy the occasional rough jade piece from Jade West, and upon Kirk Makepeace’s (owner of Jade West) inquiries of when I would start carving jade, I would reply, “It’ll happen”.
Somehow I have always been intrigued by and attracted to less-than-perfect stones, perhaps sensing a parallel with human nature and all its flaws, giving each person his or her unique character and beauty.
As I wandered around the various piles of better-quality jade at Jade West’s extensive yard couple of years ago, ‘looking for a connection’, this small 6 inch broken Polar half-buried in the mud called out to me, “I am also beautiful, please take me with you and allow me to become THAT.”
Innately there is perfection and beauty underlying all manifested forms, no matter how rough, non-descript or even ugly it appears on the surface. To find that true beauty one needs to transcend the form and realize the profound Oneness with All Things.
It took a while before I understood what this little chunk of Jade wanted to be, and it was at the last stages of wet sanding when a deeply moving and emotional INSIGHT occurred; ‘my transition through the various sculpting media throughout the last 40 years was a reflection of my spiritual evolution, from wood, as an impressionable, sensitive young man, through harder and harder stones like marble to granite, then cast metals arriving to Jade, that hardest and most unforgiving medium, yet the softest and most beautiful when finished.
Shibumi Sculpture
So I titled the piece Shibumi and wrote this to go along with it:
a state of focus and presence that never before had I experienced.
“What name I can give you, little one?” I asked, pondering the deep and profound philosophical understandings, esoteric insights and recognitions of spiritual truths the creation of this piece afforded me.
Then I found it . . . one word that embodies all these meanings, it is called Shibumi.
Shibumi is a concept that perhaps arose in ancient times from the contemplative mind of a Zen Master as he observed the inherent drive in all things to experience harmony between the inner realm and the outer form, and I believe, also offered the integration of the two into Oneness. The secret lies in non-attachment.
So Shibumi describes the Path to Effortless Perfection – a state of Elegant Simplicity that is arrived at by discovery rather than achievement.
Shibumi is the calm refinement underlying commonplace appearances.
It is understanding rather than knowledge; it is Eloquent Silence, Articulate Brevity, Modesty without Prudence, Authority without Domination; it is Spiritual Tranquility that is not passive, Beingness without the angst of Becoming, and it is Understated Beauty.
Shibumi is a demeanor, a simple gesture, a personality, a flower arrangement, a garden, a philosophical understanding, an artistic creation, and an Art in itself, of Simplicity, Grace and Elegance.
Shibumi, of Heaven and Earth, of Jade and Metal, a reflection of the Sublime and the Mundane inherent in us all.
Asking you to meet Your Self on new terms.
Shibumi by Georg Schmerholz
Georg Schmerholz
Wonderful article, my brother. From one who absolutely believes you are one of the finest sculptors living today, I loved your story and the feeling you so elequently portray. The piece itself has always been a favorite of mine, having had the chance to touch it personally at the Jade Art Now Show, and see how beautiful it looks from all angles, with the light playing upon its most sensous curves. To see a piece we all know so well on our web site will hopefully inspire more of our group to do a bit of picture-taking and story-telling of their own. There are many people out there in the Jade World who would love to see all these special creative works of new art, and hear, from the artists themselves, their personal feelings and inspirations that took them from rough stone to masterpieces of the mind and body.
David Fredericks
Antiguities, Plus…