Visiting artists in Tatebayashi

One of the most wonderful parts of the cultural exchange is the opportunity to visit artists in their studios and look at and discuss their work. We are helped enormously by the Council staff in Tatebayashi and the International Association there, who help organise things and arrange for interpreters, many of whom we know from a previous visit and who give their time so willingly. And by Christine who does most of the negotiation from over here.

Our first visit was to Kameyama-san, a remarkable printmaker.

Detail of one of his etching plates and the tool he uses to make the multiple tiny marks.

Examples of some of his etchings...

Fiona, Christine, Noela and Merv poring over the prints...thanks to photographer Barry.

Our afternoon visit was to Shimokawa-san, an environmental artist who has spent the past few years documenting and chronicling the environment along the Watarese River and creating art from his observations and experiences.

A piece made from cigarette lighters found along the river banks and in other parts.

The elegant simplicity of found driftwood pieces in a wooden crate.

Rows and rows of items found along the river, in jars.

A room filled with found bottles...

On Thursday morning, Barry and I visited Haryu-san a master copper artist. This was a most wonderful visit, with experiences, knowledge and a passion for metal shared. We were humbled to meet with him and see how much he has done, how skilled he is and how generously he shared his knowledge. Thanks too to Hiro for all his translation assistance!

A Confucian balancing piece - the bowl is unbalanced without water, unbalanced when there is too much water, but beautifully balanced when there is just enough.

Some of Haryu-san's stakes and hammers. Barry was in hammer-stake heaven!

Two metalworkers sharing time together.

One of Haryu-san's bowls and one of Barry's sitting next to each other - very simpatico.

It takes some time for it all to sink in...how honoured and fortunate we are to meet these people, share their spaces, see their work, learn about it. Art and creativity is a great way to meet in the middle, across cultures and across language barriers. Somehow the work speaks and we respond and the message is understood, without a single word of shared language being necessary.

Workshops in Japan

Well, I'm about to take you into Japanese overload over the next few days I fear!  I have spent some time reflecting on our whirlwind visit and have a series of blog posts to share.

I wasn't sure how well the internet would work whilst we were away; and therefore I set my blog up to post whilst we were gone. I'm glad in a way, as the wi-fi was intermittent and a bit ad-hoc, so it was more reliable to post before we went. Now I am back, I can do the whole Japan thing in glorious technicolour!

Our main purpose in travelling to Japan was to participate in the arts cultural exchange with the Sunshine Coast's sister city Tatebayashi, in Gunma prefecture.

This post focuses on the two workshops we did with people whilst away.  The first was with the Elementary School at Ichikai, a two hour drive away. It's a long story but here goes... Ichikai was affected by the 2012 earthquake, and the school buildings were damaged.

Noela had a contact, an Australian potter/ceramicist Euan Craig, who has lived in Japan for twenty plus years. He used to live in Ichikai, but his home and studio and pottery were destroyed.  He had to move his family and pottery to another town and re-build their lives,  but nonetheless supported and encouraged us to visit Ichikai.

Last year several artists here donated works to an auction to raise funds for earthquake and tsunami victims. Many of us also bid for items to increase the funds.  A concert was held with our sister-city's concert pianist Yayoi, and the Sunshine Coast Council also donated funds. So we had money to share with earthquake and tsunami victims for art supplies and activities which is where Ichikai comes in - people there were affected, and we had a contact. So off we went...

We worked with the school (via Euan) to arrange a full day of art workshops for the children - every child in the school participated.  We had several activities to do based on the Australian Aboriginal  Dreamtime creation story of the rainbow serpent.  Children helped decorate the serpent's head, made mobiles and puppets, and book marks as well as painted the 11m long fabric body of the serpent (which was supported by 9 hula hoops!). The day culminated in a serpent slither, after several moving speeches by the principal and student representative.

What a day. It was special to share some good time and fun with these children, special to be able to donate some funds to them and other schools for ongoing art activities. Special to share friendship and care across the miles.

A koala bookmark...looks like it is winking cheekily to me!

Two of the finger puppets we used to tell the story - rainbow lorikeet and emu.

Hand painting on the serpent's body.

The serpent all laid out.

Getting ready to go - me in my nice slippers with the littlest one reaching high on her hula hoop!

And off they go!

And now to the second workshop - making this the longest blog post ever written by me.

Sunday was the Tatebaysashi Citizen's Festival. Along with dozens of other artists we set up shop for demonstrations and workshops. Hundreds of people passed thru the hall and many sat with us as we made models (Merv), did painting and book-making (Noela), sketched portraits (Christine), made metal leaves (Barry) and did Western calligraphy (me). We had a ball and met lots of people. Another great day of friendships and exchange.

Noela's experimental brush marks.

Christine sketching a portrait.

Barry with some customers.

Me with one of my youngest students who sat for two hours...

Some more intent students...

 And another young student working hard!

It was great fun and a joy to share.

Thanks for hanging in there till the end. More soon...

Thursday Thoughts...

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”

Ursula Le Guin

I always think that when you start to look into the interaction between you, your mind, your thoughts and a book you enter fascinating territory.

I am no literary scholar, but I do honestly believe that no two people read the same book; and that often the book we end up reading isn't the one the author wrote or at least thought they wrote. Their intentions may have been crystal clear to them, but once those words collided with my mindset, experiences, preferences and prejudices, they may have taken on a whole other meaning and begun to tell a new or revised story.

I was recently reading an unpublished novel by a family member and realised that my reading of parts of it was quite feminist and female, and that some of the thoughts and actions just didn't gel because of my perspective. I'm sure he had no intention of writing something that evoked my response, but when the two came together, his words and my experiences, that was the story I read.

The last part of this quote also holds true I think - that as we read bits get added to us, get embedded into our brains, connect with previous experiences, make links and form new experiences or associations. We come away changed slightly, somewhere in our make-up, even if only a belief or emotion is re-enforced.

This is a detail of a book we came across in the New York Centre for the Book Arts. It is by Didier Mutel/Atelier LeBlanc and is called The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1994, Ed. of 61, Loose signatures; letterpress and copper engravings, 11 x 14.9 inches.

The beginnng of something?

I often wonder at the way work progresses, how one thought links to another, connects to something else and well then, maybe you have something...

I'm not sure if these are the beginning of something or not.

A while back I helped an artist friend out by writing a couple of articles for her.  She generously offered me time in her studio in return, but I umm'd and ahh'd for quite a while as I just couldn't  put my finger on what I wanted to do.  She is a ceramicist and as I sat in her studio playing with my little fiddle bits, I watched in awe as she created these amazing figures out of lumps of clay.

Me, I just fiddled.

In my head I saw white scrolls.  I figured I could just sit and chat and roll scrolls without too much trouble, and I would write message of peace on them. I think I have seen some lovely scrolls by lots of people lately - Ken and Lesley spring to mind, and I really do like the form.

So I made some scrolls, and then made some more.  And I don't know what they will be in the future, whether they will just sit quietly as studio companions, or...

We arrived back from Japan today - a whirlwind trip with so many wonderful moments, connections and sharing. I will reflect on it all and try to pull together a post or two soon...

Rainbow peace

My ability to be distracted is virtually unparalleled I think, except perhaps by Barry's.  We are both guilty of heading off to do one thing and returning having done something entirely unrelated, often having totally forgotten the thing we intended to do.

The other morning - one of those stunning clear bright blue sky Autumn mornings, we were just sitting down in the office to discuss work-work and daily to-do lists.  I had my back to the window and was watching these amazing rainbows dance over my hands as I wrote. My finger was red and orange, then yellow, green, then blue, indigo and purple...

I was having trouble staying focused on the job at hand, and then I looked up and was gone for all money. All along the bottom of the wall in front of me were rainbows!  In Autumn and Winter the sun heads to the north and streams through our louvred windows, catching the bevelled edges of the louvres and making rainbows all over the place.

We stopped to watch them and I said, oh my, wouldn't my cut-out pages look great silhouetted against those rainbows? Shame we don't have time.  My partner in crime willingly said, you've got a few minutes before they disappear. So I upped and ran over to the shed/studio (literally) and ran back with my pages to date, and we played in the rainbows.

Each shot is taken on the angle because otherwise I would be in the shot as well, it was tricky enough trying to keep Barry's hand out of it!

I don't really understand the second reflection that appears in most of the shots. Barry is holding the trial page out from the wall, I am photographing the shadow of the page on the wall, and then something else appears. But oh my, they just make me smile.

I love how in this one the second reflection had picked up the 'i' - I believe peace.

Barry was totally into it by now and grabbed a 'peace' word given to us by my bestie Sue and tried that as well before the rainbows slipped from view.

And then it was back to work. Ho hum.

Thursday Thoughts...

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” 

Zora Neale Hurston

This thought made me stop and think, which I guess is what I'm after each Thursday, the chance to stop and ponder upon something. Sometimes I read a quote and imperceptibly somewhere inside I nod and agree, go hmmm yep that's right.  You probably wouldn't see it in my face or in the movement of my head, it happens inside, quickly and instinctively. I did that with this one.

It suggested to me that sometimes years leave you questioning and wondering where to go or what to do, or what the heck was that all about - they ask questions of you. Other years seems to be full of success, achievements, the right directions and you feel as if any niggling or lingering questions you had have been answered and you are on the right path.

I don't think it's just years tho - they can be long and full of all sorts of things, ups, downs, round-abouts, and it is kind of hard to pigeonhole a whole year as either/or.  But I think I get what she means.

Rather than categorise them in a decisive manner, I would say I often have a 'sense' of a year - it was a good year or a rough year.  Often the rough years leave you with questions and wondering, and the good years feel like validations, like you've gotten the answers.

One thing I really do like about this quote tho is that is says pretty simply - not every year is great; not every year will be filled with brilliance and growth and beauty and wonder and onwards and upwards trajectories.  It's a good reminder.  I sometimes worry that we seem to expect constant and forever happiness/goodness/good times/improvements etc, and forget that human life is all about cycles, of ups and of downs, of ins and of outs. Perhaps, this is just a nice way of saying that.

©2010 Fiona Dempster - pavement punctuation, Portland OR

Cotton knots

One of the best things about driving to and from Goondiwindi to deliver and/or pick up art works is that the show is on just around cotton harvest time.

We drive past huge broad acre farms with rows and rows of cotton.  I'm not sure about you but I have this sense of child-like delight every time I see cottonballs growing on bushes!  It dumfounds, astounds, astonishes and excites me - the notion of these fuzzy cottonballs growing on plants.

So of course, we have to stop and collect bits and pieces that have blown off the trucks. I now have a box of cotton balls waiting for me in the studio, or maybe they are just keeping me company. I often think how weird we must look to anybody else driving past...

Still, on the last trip we pulled over to look at some of the massive harvested bails, and one of the things that caught my eyes was the knots in the cotton...

Who knows what we'll see in Japan!

Background glimpses

Calligraphers are often looking for backgrounds on which to place their words. Sometimes simple black words on a white page are just what you need. Other times you want the piece to convey something more and working onto a background offers that.

I often find myself looking at paper that has been decorated or treated in some way, thinking what a great background that would make.  Sometimes those great backgrounds sit around in my studio for years waiting for the right words to find them! It feels as if they need a matchmaking service at times.

And quite often if I can't do anything else, if my brain is numb I will spend some time working on backgrounds.  It feels artistic/creative and yet commits me to nothing and has no time frame.

So here are a few of the backgrounds that have appeared in the past few weeks...some with some intent behind them; some with no thought other than to do something, anything.

These lines are one of those days when I just wanted to do something mindless. Noela had made me a cola pen as we call them, and I wanted to test it out, so I just dipped it in ink and drew straight (ish) lines. I am maybe a third of the way across the page, but it was just what I needed on that day. Cola pens are quite free and hard to control to perfection, so I enjoyed the variability it gave me.

I had three long thin offcuts sitting on my bench and finally decided to do something with them.  They felt soft and grey, so I just worked with gouache and layered lots of paint and colour onto the paper then drew some marks and pulled some marks.  They are now quietly waiting and whispering what they need next...

As with all of the backgrounds there is no right or wrong way of looking at them, which I like...

And then with left over paint and ink I danced along another long thin page with no thought or intention at all, but ending up with some nice pages waiting for words...

The other nice thing with backgrounds is you never know if you'll use them whole, or chop them up!