It’s been nearly a year since Gallery G2 last invited us to play around with the forces of nature in 2009’s 風雷暴 / Fujin Raijin Exhibition. This year, rather than tempting the wrath of the storm gods, we are exploring the crackling countenance of thunder (as well as lightning) and the gusty guise of wind. Now, when I think “countenance”, I think portrait. And when I think “portrait” I think Flem. As in Flanders. And so it was that I looked to the Dutch masters and their wacky chiaroscuro for inspiration.

So, yeah, I drew a portrait of the wind. Stop on by the gallery before the 31st to take a gander. Even in my sleep-starved state I was mightily impressed by the girth of talent on display. Everything from metal sculpture to acrylic painting to hand-made dolls and, ahem, cut-paper are represented. It’s well worth weathering the sudden summer heat here in Tokyo.

I’ll be at the gallery Saturday, July 24th (count on me being late…it’s a safe bet). I’d like to be there at least one more day, but I haven’t decided which. Drop me a comment or email with your availability, and I’ll try to be there!

Here are the details:

Name: 風雷貌 / A Wind-Swept and Thunderous Countenance

dates: July. 22nd (Thurs) to July 31st (Sat) 2010 gallery closed Wed. 7/28

Times: 12pm to 7pm (Last Day: Closes at 4pm)

place: Gallery G2; located in Ginza, just around the corner from Melsa (メルサ）.
Tel: 03-3567-1555
gallery website: right here.
MAP

artists / 出品者：大澤冬樺（墨）／田村晴海（創作人形）／中村滋（アクリル）／パトリック・ギャノン（切絵）／松井直友（金属）／守屋礼子（アクリル）

日付: ２０１０年７月２２日（木）〜７月6３１日（土）
時間: １２時〜１９時 / 最終日は１6時まで
住所: Gallery G2 東京都中央区銀座２丁目８−２　日紫１F
電話: 03-3567-1555

Take, for example, my most upcoming of exhibitions: 風雷貌 (ふうらいぼう) Fuuraibou at Gallery G2 in Ginza, Tokyo. It’ll run from July 22 thru the 31st. There will be more to say about the show soon, after I figure out a good English translation for the title. Until then, mark your calendars.

In the previous blog entry, I mentioned that I was working on the biggest, wackiest piece I’ve done yet. Well, it’s 99.99% done. Just one last piece to glue down. The catch is, it’s so darn big that it won’t fit on my scanner. Yeah, usually I have to scan my artwork in two or three (or four) parts, then mosaic them together in Photoshop. And it’s a royal pain in the neck. This one is so big, it’s gonna take at least 6 or 8 scans, I think. And I’m just dreading it. Getting all the lines to line up, forcing the colors to match, zipping around and erasing all the miniscule dust particles… the thought alone makes me shudder. It won’t be as detailed, but I’m trying to eke out a good photo, and will post it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a little bit of the inspiration that drove this whale of a piece. Cherry blossoms! In April, just walking to the shop for milk turns romantic as the sakura petals fall all around you. This year, they even hung on the trees for a couple days before being obliterated by torrential rains. The dark and twisted trunks of the older trees are a fascinating contrast to the delicacy of the blossoms. You can see a few more on Facebook.

Oh yeah, and here’s a Work In Progress. All the bits and pieces before being conjured and cobbled and puzzled together. Can you figure out what this will become?

Over the New Year’s Holiday, I passed through Kyoto on my winding way to the hidden islands of the Setonaikai. On the quieter side of Kyoto Station, away from stately Nijō Castle and flamboyant Ginkakuji sits Fushimi Inari Shrine.

The shrine is most famous for it’s enormous tunnel of Torii gates, but what most impressed me were the foxes. They were everywhere, always in pairs, guarding the entranceways to each shrine, large and small. I stopped counting at around twenty, but they kept on coming. Some of them carried keys in their mouths. Hopefully not to the chicken coops. It is said that these foxes are benevolent, but I kept an eye on them anyway.

More Foxes (and some Torii’s and stuff) are posted on Facebook.

In other news, I’m hip-deep in paper right now, working on the largest and most complicated piece I’ve attempted yet (that I can remember). With all the overlapping and underlapping and gluing and ungluing, right now it feels more like an engineering project than a piece of art. My fingers are crossed that it all comes together, and that I don’t accidentally glue myself into it like a fly on sticky paper. I should have some WIP pics up in a day or two, and the piece done soon thereafter. There are a bunch more announcements brewing as well.

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a vacation. In fact, today was the first time I’ve escaped from Tokyo in months (to Kamakura, for a bit of temple hopping and mountain climbing and local beer and sausages. ‘Twas awesome).

They say that “getting there is half the fun”, and generally I agree. It was certainly the case today, with the train ride jammed full of good conversation and weird observations. Not to mention the long, satisfying nap which was the return trip. Sometimes though, all I want to do is find a way to distract myself until I reach my destination. Wrapped securely in a cocoon of books, movies, music and sleep. All the while doggedly ignoring everything springing up all around.

I’ve been trying to work on a slightly larger scale recently. It gives me a chance to tell more complicated stories with more subtle emotions and concepts. Not to mention that some of the papers I’ve picked up recently are just too beautiful to slice apart. Take, for example, the background paper in this piece. The deep blend of colors mixed with the gold ink is just stunning in person. It’s really a piece of art unto itself.

Or the subtle variations in color in the beastly blue.

Finally, here’s the scribble I worked off of. The concept popped into my head more or less fully formed, but with an entirely different cast of inappropriate characters. By this time, I had revised them to their near-finished state. The big hands on the mount’s front limbs were a late addition. It’s surprising how much intelligence those opposable thumbs add to a creature; they make all the difference between a beast of burden and a sentient creature.

I’m not sure why, really. I dig art and design and squiggly spiral lines. You would think the ink would be right up my alley. It’s the commitment. The permanence of the thing. That much ink and intent absorbed indelibly into the flesh. It defines you, at least at that one moment in time. It’s a flag stabbed into the earth declaring, “This is me. This is where I stand”.

Which, when I think about it, is pretty much exactly the same thing I do when I cut and glue and make each new piece. Except that I never run out of canvas. And if it turns out really bad, I can stick it in a drawer and hide it from the world.

All of which is a long way to go to talk about this leg. The leg is from Brooklyn, NY, USA where it is still attached (I assume) to Jared Roberts. It’s tough to express how flattering it is that Jared liked my work enough to carry it with him all the time. Thanks, Jared, for a huge compliment!

The tattoo, by the way, is based on A Bright and Sunny Day, a piece I did a little while back about a little dude who likes to eat clouds.

As for me, I’ve been keeping busy by making sure I didn’t get kicked out of the country. Oh, and I’m working on making a couple of big pieces. Bigger and more complicated than I’ve done in a while. I’m very excited and a little scared. Which is usually a fortuitous formula for making art. Also working out some plans for upcoming shows and whatnot, all of which I’ll be talking about when the details are concrete.

I plan and scheme and schedule for a couple of months before each Tokyo exhibition, working out the time needed for every piece of art and pre-show preparation, making sure to give myself plenty of time for accidents both happy and grumpy. Then, somehow I’m pulling an all-nighter right before the show, putting the finishing touches on one more piece I Just Had To Do. The morning of the show, basking in the victory of completion, I pack up every item and head out. Every item but one.

That item is inevitably a camera. Hasami No Oto (The Sound of Scissors) at Niji Gallery last month followed this pattern pretty closely. However, in days past, I would somehow manage to forget the camera (or to charge the battery) each and every time I dropped by the gallery. This time I remembered it on the last day. Probably because my vigilant wife accompanied me.

Sadly, that didn’t mean that I was conscientious enough to actually use it. The poor little thing sat in my bag all day, mewing like a forgotten kitten, waiting to achieve it’s snapshot-snapping purpose. And I ignored it. Luckily, my friend Mayuko Fujino, another artist at the show, had just accidentally bought a humongous digital SLR and was experimenting with it all day. You can see the fruits of her labors right here.

So, a big thank you goes out to Mayuko for sharing the photos with me and letting me share them with all of you. I hope those of you who couldn’t make it to the show feel as inspired by the wide variety of cut paper artwork as I was. Enjoy!

Given “Travel” (the theme of the recently wrapped-up Sound of Scissors), most folks would picture the glittering lights of Paris, the sun-baked desert pyramids of Giza, or the stone noggin chorus line of Easter Island. Then they would draw that picture. I, however, am not most people. By which I mean that I never get to go to any of those cool places. Instead, my mind wandered to the kind of travel that I do get to enjoy.

Evidently, the kind of travel that I enjoy begins with me dipping my head into any convenient hole or hollow whereupon it is rent from my body molecule-by-molecule, cast through time and space, and finally bonded to the underside of a nebulous, floaty, precipitation-prone bundle of gasses.

On the other hand, I coulda been thinking along more metaphorical lines when I was sketching out this moody forest scene. Something about how different experiences force us to re-evaluate the things we’ve always taken to be universal. Perhaps travel inside ourselves. Maybe even a short trip through the metaphysical astral plains. Y’know, that sorta high-minded nonsense.

As for technique, I’ve been playing around a little bit more with combining built up layers with “traditional” Japanese kirie (dark linework as the top layer with any color added underneath) best seen in these funky foreground grasses. Basically, starting in the middle and adding out the color layers in two directions. It’s fun, and allows for some great texturing. It also adds a little to the amount of time it takes to finish, especially when it comes to gluing down that dark layer.

I’m continuing to experiment with mixing these two techniques in some of my other work as well. It’s a nice way to distract my mind from not having any time to fly to Paris or Egypt or…hey…is that a hole?

As soon as I get the chance to do a little scanning and color-correcting, I’ll start posting the new artwork. Until then, please enjoy these small glimpses behind the curtain of mysterious secrecy. Cast your eyes below to peruse the original thumbnail sketch for “A Short Trip, A New Perspective”. Now, glance upwards to see how the image changed on it’s winding path to completion. What you’re looking at right now is the back of the paper which will form the main foundation of the piece. With all the linework on it, still in need of chopping. It took me a bit to figure everything out, but in the end, it came out pretty much the way it was envisioned. I can’t wait to show you.

Oh yeah, if the map on the postcard is a little too… hand-drawn, here’s the google version.

But I’m breaking out of my frozen slumber for a celebration of all things papery and cut with はさみの音 (hasami no oto) – The Sound of Scissors. This will be the first all-切り絵 Cut Paper Show I’ve had the honor to join, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. We’re a diverse bunch with work ranging from children’s book style to more mature themes, from traditional to contemporary. The art is rich in color and shape and line. The theme this year is “Travel”, a subject wide-open in it’s possible interpretations. I’m excited to see the work everyone comes up with, and I urge everyone in the area to stop on by.

Here are the folks involved:

• 坂井高史（切り絵）
• 瀬尾やすこ（切り絵・銀粘土アクセサリー）
• タナベユミコ（切り絵・羊毛フェルト）/ Tanabe Yumiko (cut paper + felt)
• CHIKU（切り絵）/ CHIKU (cut paper)
• 藤野真由子（切り絵）/ Mayuko Fujino (cut paper)
• パトリック・ギャノン　/ Patrick Gannon (cut paper)

the details:

name: はさみの音 – The Sound of Scissors

greeting reception: TBA

dates: Thursday March 18 – Tuesday March 23, 2010 12pm-8pm

place: 〒180‐0004 東京都武蔵野市吉祥寺本町2‐2‐10 / Tokyo, Kichijoji Honmachi 2-2-10

access:（ＪＲ中央線　吉祥寺駅より徒歩４分）

tel: 0422-21-2177

gallery website: right here.
click image to enlarge