June 2010

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Sakura blossoms and treesWow have I been negligent lately. It’s not that I haven’t been working on art… I have. So many things have been hovering in the planning stages that I really didn’t feel safe to write about them just yet. Happily, my schemes are starting to solidify.

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.

Sakura blossoms and treesIn 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?

Whale WIP

Image of Inari StatueInari, Shinto God of rice, sake and prosperity. And foxes. Trust me, you wannna watch out for those foxes. They’re tricky little devils. Back in Greece, Aesop was constantly having to deal with their clever machinations. Here in Japan, Foxes double as trickster spirits, along with their sometime ally/sometime enemy the Tanuki. Both critters have the power to shape-shift, often to make fools of us dimwitted humans. Or worse. They can even sneak into your mind and demand that you draw pictures of them.

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.

Image of Inari StatueThe 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.

Image of Inari StatueIn 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.Vixen (Inari) cut paper art by Patrick Gannon