For years I had a postcard in the studio by my wheel titled Nothingness, a calligraphic image by Mikio’s father, Tetsuzan Shinagawa. That image has loomed large in my imagination like the moon in December. It was both a pattern and an idea that slowly worked its way into my brushwork. I understood nothingness as an image, like Cézanne might have understood the mountain that he repeatedly painted. I looked at the quality of line and the openness of the mark. It was both structure and freedom and it moved through my body to be translated by my hand. I have made many bowls and plates for Omen over the years that are based on nothingness, and it has given me both direction and great freedom.
Mikio worked with the well known designer Stefan Sagmeister to design Talk To A Stone: Nothingness. Two years later Sagmeister said, “The first 60 pages are about nothingness, but I really only understood the concept about half a year ago. That if you understand that life is nothingness what unbelievable freedom that creates. If life is empty and with no meaning, then you really can start to build whatever you want to build, that nothing holds you back.”
–Stefan Sagmeister, quoted in, Sagmeister: Made You Look, by Peter Hall, Abrams, New York, 2001