This landscape is inspired by the ending of Urashima Taro, a Japanese folktale. In this story, Urashima returns to his homeland after traveling thru a watery underworld for just 3 days. As his footsteps fall upon the shore, he realizes that he does not recognize the landscape and cannot find anyone he knows. Three hundred years have past; in his grief he opens a box he was given during his journey. Within a cloud of white smoke, he is instantly aged.
I thought about the ending of this story when I last traveled back to my childhood forests of Indiana. I went to visit my favorite maple tree that had huge curving branches and broad leaves stretching up overhead. Instead of this Goliath, I was sad to find a skeletal pillar. It was hallowed with holes, branches broken and scattered about its base but it wasn’t completely gone. Bits of green leaves popped from the last few remaining branches and saplings poked through the undergrowth.
In this artwork, I imagine myself returning to an unrecognizable home 300 years into the future. I combined two locations that felt ancient and surreal, the vast heights of Bryce Canyon’s Navajo Loop Trail and the cracked earth surrounding Yellowstone’s Mud pots.
Original ink drawing by Rachael Pease. Animation by Tadashi Moriyama. Music by David Voyzey.
