Illustrating Impermanence with Miya Ando

A sixteenth-generation descendant of Bizen swordsmiths, Miya Ando is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the ephemerality of natural phenomena. Her new book, Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Rain Words, presents a visual compendium of terms for rain, featuring expressions from Buddhist rain sutras, Heian-era poetic anthologies, and regionally specific terms from throughout Japan. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Ando to discuss the concept of mono no aware and how she aims to capture impermanence and transience in visual form, what she’s learned from the radical 15th-century monk Ikkyu Sojun, and how attention to everyday phenomena like rain can invite wonder and awe.