In 1993 the artist lived in Japan for a year. Through a friend he had the uncommon access to the world of the Sumo wrestler. He began to visit the Dohyo every morning around five, the start of the Sumo practice. He entered their world and eventually befriended many of the wrestlers. In the beginning, he was just visiting and taking photographs from a distance. Now, almost twenty years later, he began looking at the photographs again and seeing this body of work in a completely different way. The fluidity and abstraction of these enormous and graceful bodies in motion has inspired him all over again. They remind him of the near religious experience of being in the presence of the graceful Sumo.