The overarching inspiration for my work is the Japanese concept of Mottainai. Mottainai translates to “what a waste”. Originating as a Buddhist term, it meant having respect for the resources around you, to practice frugality. It started when Gautama Buddha taught the monks to make their robes from “pure cloth”, cloth that no one wanted such as those scavenged from the trash that were dirty and torn or even those used to wrap the dead. What I got from this story was to try and reuse objects continuously till the end of its lifespan. This heavily inspired my material choice, to use wood that was going to be thrown away.
Thinking of these resources as having a life lead me to remember the Japanese Shinto belief, that objects have souls and should not be discarded. I thought that this Shinto belief, Animism, could be coupled with my main concept of Mottainai as they complement each other.
My family was going to throw a teak shoe cabinet, so I decided to break it down and use it as the material for my rolling pin instead. This shoe cabinet was originally a TV cabinet that had been cut and repurposed by my father when our new TV could no longer fit into it. So I found it meaningful that once again, this material would not go to waste, but would be able to become something else. Additionally, my mum would always say that its a very precious piece of furniture as it is one of the few things my late grandfather left us. To me, her words, added life into the wooden cabinet, much like Animism; and I was going to reinvigorate this life by turning it into a rolling pin. The string used to hang my rolling pin came from broken blinds that were going to be thrown as well.
This rolling pin is not just an end product, but an entire life ingrained with stories. There are numerous symbols that mark the different stages of its life- The marks of a new shoot when it was still a tree, the nails from when it was a cabinet, the indents from when it was on the lathe, et cetera. I want it to be read as a book, as a tapestry where the teak wood is the new thread of creation. Last but not least, what's special about the rolling pin is that it was made by turning end grain, which is harder to do, instead of the usual face grain.
