A Touch of Zen Whimsy: The Playful Creations of Alex Echevarria

Still Sitting is proud of the relationships it forms with organizations and individuals around the world as they engage in meditation and mindfulness practice. Occasionally, we like to share their stories in our Spotlight Series.

Alex Echevarria’s story is about how lived experience, long study, and patience can quietly shape a creative practice. If you ask him how he became an artist, he will tell you he did not set out to be one. “I wasn’t an artist. I was mainly academic,” he told me. 

Before chisels and molds, there were lesson plans. Echevarria spent years teaching high school, focusing on East Asian history, philosophy, and International Baccalaureate coursework. In the late 1980s, he and his wife Jean lived and taught in Japan through the JET Program, even marrying in a Buddhist temple. That period left a lasting impression: temples, roadside guardians, rain-washed shrines, and the quiet way sacred objects inhabit everyday spaces.

After retiring to Vashon Island about twelve years ago, the couple returned to making things for the simple pleasure of it. Jean took up woodblock printing. Echevarria began experimenting with cement, recalling the Jizō statues that dotted the Japanese landscape he once knew so well. “I liked visiting all the religious sites, but I was like, God, I’d like to have some of those statues in my yard.” 

Importing them was expensive and impractical. So he taught himself to make them. Today, Echevarria’s work feels both grounded and lighthearted: wabi-sabi Jizō figures, some carved and some cast, many accented with mosaic glass; and his “beach brick Daruma,” painted faces on century-old bricks shaped by tide and time.

Jizō: A Protector and Roadside Companion

In Japan, Echevarria encountered Jizō everywhere, long before he knew the name. “I just thought, oh, they’re Buddhas.” Over time, study and travel clarified the role of Jizo as a protector of travelers, children, and those navigating grief. Traditionally, Jizō statues often appear along paths, at crossroads, or in quiet corners, places where people pause for remembrance.

That meaning shapes how people approach his work today. “A lot of the things I make are for loss, for grieving,” he says. Families arrive with deeply personal stories: parents mourning a child, people marking the death of a loved one, others remembering a companion animal. “I’ve even now made some with cats and dogs. There’s a grieving process with losing a pet as well.”

Echevarria’s wabi-sabi Jizō reflects that tender practicality. Some are classic, hands folded in prayer. Others are bright with mosaic glass that catches low light. “When it gets dark here, they just kind of bring things to life.”

Learning the Language of Cement

“I started carving around 2010,” he recalls. “The sculptures weren’t very refined when I look back at that time. I had no art background, and it took a long time to get better and understand the material to work with. Cement is kind of an odd one.”

Early pieces were poured into simple forms. Over time, he learned to sculpt original models and create his own molds, which allowed him to produce consistent forms without losing individuality. That approach also kept the work accessible. “I keep them inexpensive, so that anybody can have one.”

Cement is physically demanding. Echevarria notes, with a laugh, that he only hauls 60-pound bags now; heavier loads are behind him. As his comfort with the material grew, he began experimenting in opposite directions: adding mosaic tile and glass to bring color and reflection, then later building tall, slender figures over armatures using additive layers. 

What remains consistent is rhythm. 

The discipline mirrors his years in the classroom and his early exposure to Japanese gardens, where placement matters as much as form. “When you enter a garden, there might be a statue sitting in a certain place, usually a little bit hidden. It’s meant to pull you in like a magnet.”

Beach Brick Daruma: Pieces of Vashon Island’s History

Echevarria  also includes a strong sense of place. The beach brick Daruma series began with a daily walk down a steep, wooded path to the shoreline. The beach there is scattered with old bricks, many rounded smooth by more than a century of waves. “They just looked like a Daruma,” he recalls. Daruma is the Japanese name for Bodhidharma, the legendary figure who brought Chan Buddhism (the predecessor of Zen) from India to China. In Japan, Daruma has merged with local myth and folklore and become part of his own unique tradition in the form of Daruma dolls.

“A lot of them are rounded off from just sitting for over 100 years.” The bricks are part of regional history. After the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, the city was rebuilt in brick, and Vashon Island once hosted brickworks whose imperfect pieces often ended up in the water. Time softened edges and darkened colors, leaving pits and marks that suggest faces.

When Echevarria paints them, he follows the material rather than forcing a design. “I don’t control the process. Sometimes the brick just does that. Little indentations can determine how the face is going to turn out.” His line work is intentionally simple: “It looks like a kid’s drawing.” 

Daruma figures traditionally symbolize perseverance and resilience. In this form, they also carry local history. Set on a shelf or tucked into a garden, a beach brick Daruma offers a quiet reminder to keep going, shaped as much by environment as by intention.

Frogs, Foxes, and the Future

After more than a decade of steady making, Echevarria’s curiosity remains open-ended. Recently, animals from East Asian folklore have entered the studio: foxes (kitsune), tanuki, frogs, octopi, and even a few yokai-inspired forms.

“People like frogs,” he notes. His first carved frog sold immediately, followed by several commissions.

Alongside these playful figures runs a modernist thread: tall, elongated sculptures sometimes compared to Giacometti in their proportions. They are distinct from the Jizō and Daruma, yet connected by the same instinctual process.

Vashon Island itself remains a collaborator. Its rain, moss, and drifting debris feel closer to the Japanese climate Echevarria once loved than the dry Rockies where he previously lived. On Vashon, bricks wash ashore, gardens thrive, and statues slip naturally into ferns and gravel.

In this setting, he finds unceasing inspiration.

“I don’t stop. I just keep going, making new forms or changing old ones. I’m at the point where I’m just looking to do something different.”

You can find more of Alex’s work at the WabiSabi Studios Facebook Page.

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