Yanaka at night

These are they guys that wake up a 5 AM to start the morning chant.   It is part of living in a temple section of  Tokyo..  I wonder how many centuries they have been doing this on the coldest days of January.  They keep it up for more than a week, probably the full cycle of 12 days, but that is just a guess.  I know it runs more than a week

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CUyvUQFDD64

m.youtube.com/watch?v=WNkqpmHtFGo

They cover most to the temple section, stopping at every Nichirin Temple.

Who's Picasso now?

Young children  are impressive.  They are true scientists, doing everything they can to unlock the mysteries that surround them.  They want to discover how everything works.

They also are not shy to express themselves with art.  Picasso said something about being able to paint like an old master at 16 and spending the rest of his life trying to learn to paint like a child.

I had fun at Tokyo Kase University yesterday, at the kids center running a workshop in ink painting.  And I will truly say that these young kids put Piccaso to shame.  Direct attack, use of line and marks and space.

Night ride

Coming home from the public bath, thinking it is hard to go out on a cold night, and the baths keep closing and are further and further away, but what a night. I don't envy anyone stuck in at home with their tv on and a hot bath waiting.  To have missed this night under the stars riding home from the sento would have taken something very important from my life.  I am quite thankful that I don't have a bath.

Esty

100 years ago people who wanted to be artists found a way to get to Paris.  50 years ago the center was New York.  I ask my students at the Art U in Tokyo, "Where is the center of the art world now?"

A lot of my students say that the center in now on line.

I opened a virtual shop on Esty.  What will happen?  Who can say?

https://www.etsy.com/listing/172215775/dragon-mandala-etchingengraving-hand?ref=sr_gallery_1&ga_search_query=hathaway+dragon+etching&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=JP&ga_ref=auto3&ga_search_type=all&ga_facet=hathaway+dragon+etching

Dear Mr Richie,

I have to write you even though you are dead.  I was walking up towards your place, your old place, before you moved to Ueno.  I was on the way to my studio from a night down the hill in my pub.  I stopped at Akafudado to get a little more beer and some senbai or something to eat with it when I ran into Doritos.  Can you believe it, Doritos.  when I first came here they didn't even have cheese.  How was it when you arrived?  I guess they didn't even have a store back then, the streets were rubble and you must have lived on the American plan for a while till the locals got back on their feet.

Well now they have everything, all kinds of imported wine, "Hey Mr,  Give me chocolate,"  did you actually ever hear that when you first arrived?   Well now they would not even dane to bite a bar of Hersey's, too rough.  Got to have a Pokey, a Kit Kat is fine, good marketing here you know.

I was just walking by your old house, where you first lived when I first met you, and wanted to say hello.  I remembering you crossing in the middle of the street where I was walking and saying that you were a bad gaijin.  Decorated by the Emperor though, so I guess you weren't so verry bad.

You came to my first exhibition in Japan, because you were a neighbor, and because Mrs. Seki passed the invitation to you.  you used to copy your manuscripts there before you sent them off to the publisher.  I remember meeting you on the street and you announced that you had just posted, "Honorable Guests," about famous visitors to Japan.  You looked so happy that day.  It is a happy thing to get a new book in the mail, out of your hands and have it someone else's responsibility.  good book too.  I enjoyed reading every bit of it.

You were an old guy when I met you, still lots of vigor, but white haired and wearing some kind of baby blue polyester leisure suit that was too far out.  You were old.  I wonder, am I now the same age you were then? 

Winter time now, about the time we lost you.  Might be your anniversary, your first.  Soon anyway around Pearl Harbor Day. Take care.  I miss you.

selling on line

My sister heard a podcast from the public radio, some ex rapper selling his Sharpie drawings on the Internet to former rap fans.  "Its a good idea, JIm,  you should do this too!"

I get requests to buy things on line sometimes, but usually say no.  It doesn't seem right with something as personal as a painting to sell it to someone who has only seen a photo. 

Mostly I am an ink painter.  I use ink because it suits my hand and because it is the most sensitive, evolved materials humans have designed with for expressing a feeling, a line, directly from heart to hand to paper.  It moves fast.  It moves slowly.  Every twitch, every twist, every hesitation, is recorded directly on the paper.  It is honest, no tricks, lies.

But ink painting is not all I do.  Sometimes I etch. 

Etching is a different world altogether, indirect as can be, scratching lines on a piece of metal, covering it with a ground, scratching thru, letting it be bitten by acid, then scratched again and scraped and polished.  I found good results last year when I put it on my anvil and hit it with a hammer.  And when the copper plate is scratched, engraved, hammered and bitten it is smeared with ink then gently cleaned, rubbed and polished untill only what in the artists desires is left to be printed.  Then the plate is put on a press and squeezed tight between steel rollers to a moistened piece of paper, what comes out of the press is the result.

It is the art of Rembrandt, and the art of Blake.

Perhaps etchings are more appropriate to be sold on line.  Perhaps I will try.  And if i do, this will be my first.

Dragons in a Christmas Mandala

 

 

I found it last week in a book.  I had forgotten how much fun it was.  Prices, a better photo, and more information to follow if i decide to go thru with this.

Winter Lotus

I go to the pond when I am free these days.
Every day the lotus change.  They wither and dry.  Like soldiers on a field,  Some still, many fallen down, getting smaller, fading away.

 

  I come home and paint.

 But not only decay, there is the promise of life. 
I picked up a pod that floated on the water.  Out came seeds.