These installation and sculptures were exhibited as works-in-progress at Design Festa in Tokyo, Japan, through an artist residency with the Japan-U.S. Community Education and Exchange (JUCEE), Oakland, CA, 1999.

This work explores the waribashi, the disposable wooden chopstick. The sculpture installation, "Tsuyu (Rainy Season)," consists of over 15,000 recycled waribashi collected from small noodle shops in Tokyo. The installation includes a looped recording of chopsticks falling and my washing them by hand. Chopsticks pervade Japanese culture; over 110 million waribashi are used and thrown out daily in a nation that is the world's largest consumer of wood products. Wooden chopsticks are thus a powerful cultural metaphor for consumerism and literal human consumption everyday, and yet the Japanese rarely see them en masse. They are a reminder of Japanese-ness to the Japanese in the same way that automobiles remind us of our American-ness; they appear inherent to our way of life despite the impending consequences of their habitual use.

The project description and more photo documentation are available in Supporting Materials for Transformation/Possibility: The Waribashi Project.

In 2005, The Waribashi Project: San Francisco, an environmental collaborative with the Japanese Community and Cultural Center of Northern California (JCCCNC) received funding from the Columbia and LEF Foundations. The project was a primary exhibit for the United Nations World Environment Day 2005 conference in San Francisco. I collected and washed over 180,000 used chopsticks from San Francisco Japantown restaurants. More images from the project will be posted on this website, but until then, you can look at The Waribashi Project website.

Tsuyu/Rainy Season, installation view, 1999. 15,000+ recycled and hand-washed wooden and bamboo disposable chopsticks, tatami mat, fishing line, sound, friction and gravity. Dimensions of the room: 8'3" x 11'3"x 8'

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