NARRATOR: 

In a work like Shodo Flowing by Japanese-born artist Isamu Noguchi the meaning is left open-ended. But the title is a clue.  

JOHN ZAROBELL: 

Shodo is a Japanese word for writing. Writing is one form of calligraphy. There are different standards of calligraphy, and flowing is one of the extremes; it’s the loosest, most open-handed form of writing. Shodo is defined as the way of the brush. It’s almost like this evolution of an abstract notion that is here materialized into a sculpture.  

NARRATOR: 

You might think this work is a Japanese ideograph, an image word.  

ZAROBELL: 

But we don’t know what word it is. And he just tells you that it is about writing, not that it is this thing. Calligraphy is about, you know, using energy to create lines that mean something. And so calligraphy is fundamentally similar, in a way, to what a sculptor tries to achieve— you move around a sculpture and you take it in— what you’re doing is actually something like the calligraphic process, by changing your angle by walking around it, it becomes a different meaning. So in a sense, you are writing a sentence as you move around it.