The exhibition was funded in part by The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and The County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program.
AMERICAN VIEWING STONES was an exhibition, presented in the Balboa Park Museum, of natural, non-precious stones collected for their spiritual and aesthetic qualities, based on a 2,000-year-old Asian tradition. The Japanese call stones that suggest landscape features _suiseki,_ an art form often displayed with bonsai. While inspired and still predominantly influenced by _suiseki,_ Americans are incorporating concepts from other traditions and adding innovations in an evolving version of stone appreciation — Viewing Stones. The viewing stones in the exhibition were selected from the American Viewing Stone Resource Center’s Jim and Alice Greaves Collection.
Complementing AMERICAN VIEWING STONES was CHINESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS — The Ten Bamboo Studio, selections from the Museum’s permanent collection that were a testament to the precision and skill of Chinese woodcutters and painters.
Collecting rocks for religious or aesthetic purposes can be traced back to the Han dynasty (206 B.C. - A.D. 220) when Chinese connoisseurs began using large stones to decorate their gardens and courtyards. Scholar’s Rocks is the most common English name given to the individual smaller stones that have been appreciated by educated and artistic Chinese at least since the Song dynasty (960-1270). They embody key aspects of the large garden rocks: slenderness and verticality; irregular, suggestive and sometimes grotesque shapes with sharp angles; strongly textured surfaces; deep furrows and perforations that weave in and out of the stone, providing depth and channels through which the imagination can flow. While some stones were modified to make inkwells and brush rests, most were simply enjoyed for their beauty and as a focus of meditation.
The indigenous Shinto traditions of Japan were closely associated with nature and the land. Thus when the Chinese Imperial Court sent gifts of _penjing_ (rocks and trees displayed in basins) and Scholar’s Rocks to the Empress Regent Suiko (593-628 A.D.), they were readily admired by the cultured Japanese. During the latter part of the Kamakura period (1183 - 1333), a growing acceptance of Zen Buddhism by the samurai class led to a pronounced shift away from the energetic, convoluted Chinese styles, toward subdued, horizontal landscape stones — _suiseki._
American viewing stone collecting began with first and second generation Japanese Americans who continued their traditions of bonsai and _suiseki._ Gradually other Americans who were at first fascinated with the practice of bonsai were exposed to the _suiseki_ that the Japanese Americans incorporated into their formal bonsai displays.
Guest curator Jim Greaves presented a workshop and a lecture on American Viewing Stones on Saturday, October 6, 2007.