New Year

Cleaned my studio for the new year. 
Now I'm getting ready to paint 29 meters of dragons on a 2 1/2 meter room.  I wonder what will happen.

New Year Cleaning

 I cleaned my studio down to the tatami.

I have to paint 50 meters of dragon.  It is part of my plan for my  Exhibition at the Nakanosawa museum April - June 2013. 

 

The dragons are to go along with my 29 Stops of the Yamanote paintings.  I needed every inch of the tatami to attempt it, and still I will only be able to work on 2 1/2 meters at a time.

 

I picked up materials.  Wish me luck.

Tokyo Geidai Doctoral Exhibition

I did not always agree with Ikuo Hirayama, but he was correct in his opposition to offering a Ph.D. in studio art. Having a Ph.D. in studio art is kind of like having, "Moron," tattooed on one's forehead.
For evidence proving the inverse relation between art and higher education, check out this year's Doctoral Exhibition at Tokyo Geidai, in the far edge of Ueno Park.

Barbecue Pit Firing

Adam and Eve about to face the fire

My third burn in the garden

I am better understanding how to do it, and using better materials.  The first time I did this I used old test papers from my university students as fuel.  Now I am using pure Iwate charcoal.  And I am starting more slowly, warming the oven in my hori kotatsu for 2 days before burning (Reminding children not to kick it.)  My first burn I had breakage.  this time I did not.

 

I enlarged the holes in the bottom of the can, and I added wood shaving at the top of everything inside the can, and piled bricks on top of it for extra insulation.

 

 

 

The results are better.  Nothing shattered in the burn, and there is a lot less smoke and flames with charcoal to frighten the neighbors. The fire is smoother, hotter too.

 

first opening the can the next day

 results

 

now to clean and maybe do some post fire work

 

Museum in the Mountains

I traveled deep into the hills of northwest Gunma, on a train line I had never been on before.  There is a wonderful little Museum up there, an NPO.  It is in a 5 sided building back in the woods. 

Fair trade goods in the giftshop, kind husband and wife that set the place up.  They have invited me to exhibit my paintings next April.  It sounds like a lot of fun.

Play

 

 

Transiting time after an exhibition, still plenty of teaching schedule, but having fun in between with clay. 

wet clay

Thanks to all that

Thanks to all that made my exhibition such great fun this year.

Last Day

I do this every year.  In October I put new paintings on the wall.  A year of thinking and painting, then three weeks of display.  Today is the last day.  It went by so quickly, not easily of course.  But now it is nearly done.
 

 

This was the last painting I did this year,  Mr. Kato's Gate, it's the Kokyo, painted  on  100 year old wood. 

I wonder what i will do next year.

Bad photos of Hidden Voices exhibition

Photos can be great art, but photos of an art exhibition are bound to fail, but here they are as a shadow of what is/was my exhibition.

Natsomi Soseki welcomes visitors this year

first room, viewed from the place you take your shoes off at the door

It was the first design, plan, for carving, more of a shrine or a box than what evolved from it.

 This is the last of the paintings I did this year, like the other paintings on wood pieces it is painted on 100 year old wood, saved from a Japanese house in transition. the black lines are sumi ink, colors are "Nihonga" "Japanese Painting, not such a different material than Giotto and daVinci used back when, an artist made mix of pure pigments and binder.

 

These paintings were basically ink painting on heavily pigmented, thick and wild Japanese washi.  This one is a mandala.  A Buddhist Priest visited my exhibition this week.  I know a lot of the local priests but had not met him before.  There are over 100 temples in this neighborhood.  Anyway, he was smiling after he looked around.  "Not Buddhist mandala,"  He said.  But still he seemed pleased to see them.    He said he particularly like, " Moons and Stars Mandala."

It is the invitation card piece.  Some visitors said it looks like a key hole.  I put out little flashlights so visitors could explore them as thought they were a cave. I was shocked and happy to see what the urushi I used as a finished did to the colors of the wood - balcks and golds came out naturally.  This one was covered with just a very thin layer of urushi

Blue Mandala,  on pigmented paper, ultramarine light pigment, the same as I used in the first wood piece.  This one also used silver in addition to the black ink.  Sometimes I used real silver, sometimes a mixture of the inside parts of shells mixed with aluminum dust.  This one was real silver.  Real silver is a lot brighter at first, but we know what silver does in time.  I wonder how well it is protected by the binder, and how much and when it will tarnish.  Some of the pieces in the museums have silver that has turned black.  Sometimes it is almost rainbow in its tarnish.

This was the first of the wooden pieces I painted, great old wood from a friends house reconstructed, originally from the Meiji Era.  This painting is of a party at my house.  Last January when I painted it I thought I would be painting a series of gatherings and parties, in the end I did only 2.  And only one is included in this exhibition.

 It is the second carved from the same tree as the key and the blue shrine.  the wood colors are different because I used different finishes.  This was finished with many rubbed layers of urushi.  Urushi is hard to explain to westerners.  It is a thick sap from the urushi tree, some sort of a relative of poison  sumac trees I believe, quite volatile, and dangerous for some people when wet, strong and safe when dry.  It is very popular in Asia, being so strong, versitile and beautiful.  I used raw urushi for this one.  Urushi is commonly found on miso soup bowls, inside, mixed with red pigment.  It is my favorite finish for wood and it makes my skin itch as thought I were in hell for about a week every time I use it.

 Two pieces of wood stuck together and painted upon.  One of my biggest joys this summer was going to the ball games after a day of painting in the studio.  In this painting Mitere is at bat for the Swallows.

 Another Blue Mandala.  A human skull is used as a counter balance, and a common occurrence in Zenga.  I heard a guy in Nepal asked on the radio for his secret of happiness.  He said, "Oh, I think of death every day." It is also, of course,  a nod to Ikkyu.

 I  can not say why, but every Icarus i painted this year was walking.  This one is walking, viewed by two rabbits and a child on my street.

 

 OK It's me in a place I love, doing what is best to do in the summer before going out to the ball game.

 It is a study for the first wood piece, a dragon over Tokyo, Not Godzilla.

 Three of my favorite homes on the same page, probably i should have included Gault Avenue, perhaps next painting.

 Planets Mandela, pen and ink and watercolor on paper.

 Gold painted around ink on washi.  It is a lot harder than just painting directly on gold, but not the same, so I had to do it this way.

 Another in the Hanami, Cherry blossom, series.

 First one sold, ink and some color on blue pigment.

Upstairs wood guy, made from "kusunoki," eucalyptus wood.  You can still smell it even through the thin Japanese urushi and english wax finish.  It is the only squrish box in the show.

 

the smaller red fish, a study for the wood painting downstairs.

 

 

 Have you ever been to Kurobera in Yamanashi? 

 Yanaka Mandala. In the late middle ages, Japanese were the first people to ad landscapes to mandala.  This landscape is Yanaka, viewed from Dango Zaka.

 

 A pole, maybe from a tokanoma, inside is a painting I call the polecat.  It is book ended by etchings.

 More etchings, ask and I can send you a better image.

 Black Ship going one way and Icarus the other.

 

The end

 

First day of exhibition

My show opened today without me.  I had to teach all day.  This exhibition I will be there next Saturday and every Sunday only.  Autumn teaching schedule keeps me busy.

It seems a good opening.

I look forward to people's reactions tomorrow, because I tried new things this year, with new materials.  I wonder what people will think.

new exhibition

 

My ehibition starts tomorrow! 

 

I wonder if i can be ready in time!

 

Natsumi Soseki, creepy?

 

Maneki Neko, Lucky Cat, first became popular about 100 years ago. 

 I had a request to make something for the 100th Centennial of Natsume Soseki's death.

I showed it to my children, "creepy"  was all they said.

But isn't is a little creepy to have a cat running around your neighborhood writing everything down?

 

With this last thing done I can put away my paints and put up my walls.  It is time to turn my studio into a gallery.

frames

Frames are always a challenge.  Every year I seem to design make a different kind of frames.  This years painting were unique so it is natural to make new sorts of frames.  With less than 2 weeks till my show opens, it is certainly frame time.

 

I have used urushi and most of the other materials before, but this was the first time I used kiri wood to make frames, the tall rectangles in the center.  The paintings were done on 100 year old wood recycled from Japanese buildings, using kiri wood seemed natural.

Second Fireing

Trying another ceramic firing.  I am starting this time with a "candle burn"  to warm more slowly, but even a single candle is pretty hot on my little tin box.

 After a while with the candle I turned up the fire, charcoal mostly, deep coals, and flared it up from time to time with thin softwood for extra bursts of heat.

after an evening I set it all aside to cool overnight, and was happy to find nothing had exploded or even cracked in the kiln the next day.

a sample of the results, still warm