The Nature of Making

Boston Gallery

November 19, 2025

In Japan, craftsmanship is inseparable from nature. To make by hand is not to master material but to collaborate with it—to move in rhythm with the living world. Guided by this understanding, The Nature of Making becomes a meditation on the spirituality of making, where color, form, and space evoke the quiet dialogue between human presence and nature’s intelligence.

The Nature of Making – Image 2
The Nature of Making – Image 2

The exhibition unfolds as a sensory passage from saturation to stillness, from ritual to reflection. Within these rooms, color carries the symbolic weight of the artist’s memories: the red bowls of time in a temple, the kind gesture of cherry blossoms, and the significance of seasons. Each hue acts as an emotional register, marking a different state of being.

At its heart, the exhibition explores how mastery can feel effortless, how spiritual depth can reside in daily gestures, and how silence—or ma—gives shape to what is seen and felt. To inhabit these spaces is to experience the continuum between craft and nature, between what is made and what simply is.

The Nature of Making – Image 5
The Nature of Making – Image 5

Truss (2025) by Sylvie Johnson

The Nature of Making – Image 8

Chamber (2025) by Sylvie Johnson

The Nature of Making – Image 7

Chamber (2025) with Fold (2025) by Sylvie Johnson

The Nature of Making – Image 10
The Nature of Making – Image 11

Breath (2025) by Sylvie Johnson

The Nature of Making – Image 4
The Nature of Making – Image 4

Fold (2025) by Sylvie Johnson

The Nature of Making – Installation 4
The Nature of Making – Installation 4
The Nature of Making – Image 9

Murmur (2025) by Sylvie Johnson

The Nature of Making – Image 12

Celeste (2025) by Sylvie Johnson