I saw a large tree in a park. It lay as if sleeping on a gently sloping grass-covered hill. When I returned a few days later, the tree had disappeared. In place of its roots remained a scar, a mound of raw earth. I envisioned a new tree growing on this mound.

Like Inanna-Ishtar, goddess of Sumerian myth, I wanted to pluck this uprooted tree and bring it to my "holy garden." I wanted the tree to lie and sleep, envisioning a new world like the dream of the world that emerges from the Indian god Vishnu's navel in the form of a lotus flower.

Statues depicting Buddha and his two attendants seated on lotus flowers dominate the sutra hall at Kiyomizu Temple. At the center of this space I created an enclosure using four antique Japanese gilded folding screens. On their verso, working with henna, I drew a supine tree that enfolds the created space in its embrace. The tree floats in a sea of gold leaf applied using the Byzantine technique. A universe of small convex mirrors surrounds the tree, recalling the convex surfaces seen in Byzantine-Russian icons, and emanating the light of Vishnu's dream. Visitors are invited to envision their own flowers, their own universe inside this gold space between Buddha and the Sleeping Vishnu Tree.


Shinji Turner-Yamamoto
Kyoto, October 2005

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