Ever since returning from Yamaguchi at the end of February, I have set my sights on gathering my thoughts about what I have seen and what has inspired me to dive deeper. Unfortunately, time does not slow down and here we are about to hit the middle of March. Between the last time that I wrote anything substantial, which was February 10th, and now, there are been countless things that I have seen and surprisingly a significant number of things that continue to stick with me over the last month or so.
There is no way this is all going to get finished in one sitting as I see the clock about to strike midnight. So rather than go for a clean, complete writing for each entry, I am just going to see where each post goes before my eyelids droop over my eyeballs send me into dream land. I will pick up where I left off on the next post and I really hope I can get caught up by the end of this week.
Way back in February after my visits to Roppongi and Ebisu, I ended up making one more gallery visit that weekend. On the recommendation of an artist I met in Nakanojo, I went over to Gallery Holster to see an exhibition of drawings by Irie Nanako. Unbeknownst to me, I ended up at the gallery just after an artist talk which I found out afterwards. This explained the crowd of people in the space at 3 pm on a Sunday afternoon. As I wandered around the gallery space, I understood why I was told about her exhibition. You can see in some of the photos below.
I ended up spending a fair bit of time looking at the drawings and thinking about how these were made. I managed to snag a minute of her time and asked her about her process and she said that each of these drawings are made with a story, thought, or feeling in mind. We have talked about sitting down some point this spring to talk about our works in more detail. I can see an interesting contrast in terms of how the two of us approach drawing. You can see more of her work by clicking here.
On the next day, I headed over to Shiinamachi nearby check out the opening for "After 10 Years" at Erina Matsui's new Atelier. The exhibition consist five artists whom all graduated around the same time and maintained ties. Matsui gathered the five artists together to hold an exhibition of the four artists as well as an open studio for her atelier. Here is an image of her open studio.
One of the artists in the exhibition was Haruna Sato whom also exhibited at the 2017 Nakanojo Biennale. I have followed her work for many years now. I remember having moved to Tokyo for a just a couple years and then seeing her gorgeous paintings of babies, especially their skin and have followed her work since then. She has also been exploring landscape motifs with her paintings which were at the atelier along with one of her skin paintings.
I also liked the paintings of stones and gems by Yuki Nakamura that were also in the exhibition.
Okay, that is it for part one. I am off to bed. Back tomorrow!
Before I forget, I do want to cover thoughts about curating and studio space, both of which have been on my mind the last month or so. So if I forget to do so in part two, remind me!