小田
​時男

Tokio Oda : It's been 40 years since I started working with wood.

I have learned so many things from this work and this material. For example, I have realized that in the relationship between nature and humans, we are from the forest. Also I strongly feel the problems which derive from the changes in human society over time. In other words, the wood conveys the messages, memories, and warnings from nature to humans.

Mendocino is surrounded by the deep redwood forest.

The forest is consists of many groups of woods which stand in a circle. In each group, woods stand by each other like a family. This is because when  old wood ages over hundreds and thousands of years and becomes rotten, baby trees grow around the old tree and form a circle. This is called a redwood circle, like a family, and then becomes a forest of many family member trees. I have heard that the native people who had lived for a long time in this area benefited from the forest and held important meetings in center of the circle. 

I am reminded of the reasons that the forest and various livings exist when I think of the relationship with family and others, whose connection to each other is becoming weak.