resting on
the substance
of the water
waters
of
march
My Tai Chi Chuan professor understood two things: the people signed up for his class were coming from varying degree paths, and the majority of his students would not read the recommended “textbook’’ for such an unconventional college course. So I thought it was quite wise that his final exam was subject to individual interpretation as to form and content. As long as the subject of our submission related to Tai Chi in some way, we were all passing.
Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain by Chungliang Al Huang, the recommended reading on the art and practice of Tai Chi, was a great reading experience for me. I quickly found myself snipping bits and pieces of paragraphs and sentences that stood out to me or I found to be particularly poetic. My interpretation of the final exam became an art book capturing the visual and literary essence of Tai Chi movements and wisdom.
Single-sided and unbound, the pages I designed for this book function as mini posters or cards with excerpts from the source material. Typographic spacing and minimalistic figures capture the flowing nature of Tai Chi. I wanted to capture how movements interact within and around each other.
drops
of the
jordan
waters
of
march
I knew Resting on the Substance of the Water could not stand alone. So during my academic break I set out to create its counterpart based on John Mark Comer’s book, Practicing the Way. As a new Christian, this book provides the roadmap for the life of a follower of Jesus. His thesis is threefold: be with Jesus, become like Jesus, do as He did. Heavily influenced by the seminal classics of Dallas Willard, Comer’s writing style was just as unique as the speech patterns of Huang. Pairing the two made perfect sense to me.
The naming schemes for the titles in this series come from the frequent use of water symbolism and terminology in both Tai Chi and Christianity. I felt it was fitting to title the series Waters of March because I was not only completing these books in the spring, but the famous Brazilian song of the same name by Antônio Carlos Jobim also lyrically captures the duality of things, oftentimes held together. That’s exactly how I felt as a Christian taking a Tai Chi class.
[EXCERPTS]
“Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.”
“Not a program, but a progression.”
“I do; you watch. I do; you help. You do; I help. You do; I watch.”