Sun Motifs

Doodles in my sketchbook...

A Good Day

I've been drawing lots of sun motifs lately. I need sunshine. Where I grew up, you can go weeks and weeks in grey blah-ness. I have SAD, I don't like grey. One day soon, I'll talk more about this.



Today was a good day. It was sunny and warm. Walking home from work I saw this scene. I don't know why, but I was captivated by the man fixing the Buddhist Church parking lot sign. It reminded me of my trip to Boracay, in the Philippines when I visited an artist's studio there ten years ago. It was basically a shack, without even 4 walls. But every morning the artist was out sweeping the yard out in front, and his works laid out carefully for passers by to see.


Adam and I were talking about memory last night - what things we remember, and what things we don't. I remember scenes that made me change who I am, decide things, come to realizations. (I'm terrible at remembering movies or tv shows, although that means I can watch the same ones over and over again!)

I remember thinking that I really admired how much care he took of his space, no matter how bare and simple.


This is my space. Quite simple too... Full of lots of little bits, mostly paper. I'm trying to appreciate where I live, even if the sun doesn't always get in.

Never stop creating...

...even when you're too tired to think. Your brain will keep on working on it, and file the ideas away somewhere...

The 10,000 Project

This is where i sit every day to drink coffee read pull pencil lines across paper make grocery shopping lists mend holes in tshirts write birthday messages look at the curtain while peeling a pink grapefruit and think about how much i really like you.



www.arthousecoop.com/users/yuchiba

Artists I Like Right Now

I'm taking a break from talking about my art and taiko. It's important to see what else is going on out there, I truly believe that.

I'm really interested in two artists right now, that other people have introduced me to. One is Henry Evans, a botanical printmaker. I love how expressive and how simple his work is.

I love what he has to say about choosing subjects:

"Within any given range of subject matter, the artist can usually find, as I have, an enormous assortment of individual subjects to draw. For reasons not too easy to explain, some subjects are more appealing to the public than others. Equally mysteriously, when an artist is drawn to a subject, and perhaps puts more of himself into it, the public tends to respond more deeply, more enthusiastically. Some sort of mutual-encouragement syndrome seems to develop. When you manage to convey your all-too-human feeling in a work of art, certain people who see it will vicariously experience some of the intensity of your involvment and will become absorbed by, and possessive of, what you have done. When this is combined with a very familiar or sentimentally loaded subject, the response is even stronger and the desire to possess the picture seems to increase."

I understand this, but only through experience. The less I worry about what I think others would like to see and just think about what I want to happen in my art, the more people seem to respond to it.


Also, talking about the process of cutting and fitting blocks:

"I sometimes look at the work of other artist in galleries, museums, and friends' homes. Much of it seems intentionally casual, and I confess I am sometimes a little envious of the happy carelessness of other artists. I am quite convinced that there is some virtue in "good clean work," but I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what it is. The artist must listen to the voice inside him. Mine seems to abhor carelessness. The voice is always there, so I guess that's the way it has to be."

(From Henry Evans Botanical Prints: With Exerpts From the Artist's Notebooks, 1977 - Thank you Megan!)

The other artist that I like instinctually, but have to find out more about is Rex Ray.



Do investigations into other people's work, to find out more about your own.

"Go deep into something..."

"Go deep into something." is what Shoji Kameda of On Ensemble said at Stanford last year. (Do you remember this, Shoji?) It was a forum on composition at the Collegiate Taiko Invitational with Roy Hirabayashi, Kenny Endo and Shoji. I was taking scratchy notes on the back of a handout. I keep this nearby so I can look at it from time to time - I love it.

These were Shoji's Guidelines for Composing:

1. Start with where you are, and with what you have. ("You may have great music in you, but it's underneath a bunch of crud.")

2. Be a sponge.

3. Never stop improving.

4. Don't get precious about your work or art form.

5. Find your voice. Be inspired by, not a derivative of. ("Is this musical idea really working, or is it just me showing off?")



I think all these things apply to creating art too.

I opened up my sketchbook this afternoon, stared at the blank pages wondering about the theme I'm supposed to follow... This is what came out. I'm not being precious. And I am trying to get at what's under all the crud.





My Canvas Project submission is now showing at the Atlanta Airport. It's the green one in the right frame - top row, second from the right. It's so small, but it's me showing. I don't do that, ever. Amongst cool art from all over the world. So different and interesting.

The Sketchbook Project

I just got back from Taiko Conference in LA. My brain is still mulling over a lot of different things. As usual, creativity is one of those things.


I found this bookmark that I made, in one of my old notebooks. It reads "Only a food imitates. It is better to do bad work of one's own." - George Bizet

Do I really believe this now?

Psycho Daiko is the second taiko group I belonged to, when I was teaching in Japan. I wrote 2 songs for this group (called "Yaki Neko" and "Sakana Milkshake"!). I didn't think about how "good" they were as compositions at the time. We played them and enjoyed them and the audience enjoyed us. That was enough.


I haven't written anything for many years.

I want to, and have many ideas. But I need to start somewhere...

As usual, my art is following along the same themes. I have many many ideas. But where to start?

A sketchbook.

I'm starting on my new arthouse project tonight - the Sketchbook Project. I'm going to try to post something each week, even if it's bad. It'll be bad work of my own.

Distractions

I finally updated my etsy store!

I haven't felt much like writing lately. Things go like that... It's always about finding balance and the right rhythm of life because I always do too much of one thing and not enough of the other.

My university major was in psychology, so I can't help but psychologize. Psychology is so interesting! If you get a chance, read Oliver Sacks' "Musicophilia." (Here's a clip on PBS where he explores themes from the book.) Or anything else by Oliver Sacks for that matter. He's kind of my hero.

My own narrative, is always accompanied by a meta analysis of the narrative from physiological and sociological perspectives. My brain has too much space devoted to figuring out how people think. No wonder I'm happiest when I'm playing taiko or playing with paper - the simplicity of "don" and "blue looks nice with yellow" is grand.

When I was young and things got hard at home (my parents are socially challenged non-traditional first generation arranged-marriage Japanese who moved to Canada without money later in life), I could never understand why my mother would just start singing or fall back into drawing flowers when she couldn't answer my questions. I get it now. Not only do Japanese of her generation not talk about anything, but after years of grating tension without resolve - it really was the best option. That and religion...

It's an escape.

For some people it's tv or sports. Mine is cutting out dots.

The Canvas Project

Imitate

My most recent project is working on 5 mini canvases (3" x 3") from the Art House Coop. (Click on the link to see my portfolio.) Hopefully one of my canvases will be displayed amongst hundreds of other artists' works at the Atlanta Airport from the end of July through the beginning of September. If you happen to be there, look out of me!

The project's instructions were to make anything, based on 5 words that were chosen randomly for me.

Argentum

Wild

Savant

Shimmer

Honestly, I sat on these for about 3 months totally stuck on the concept. Then it hit me - I should do them the way I always do my art. My art is based on plants, people, bright colours, and layering paper. After that, the rest came quickly.

Am I happy with them? Yes. Because I made them without overthinking, they are a good representation of what I do. And this is significant for me! I've spent such a long time trying to figure out what is me.

My favourite one is Savant. I like to think of people as having a garden in their minds. Some have very simple straight connecting branches that rarely change. While others have a constantly growing tangled mess, which yield some thorns and some flowers.

Finding Balance

I play taiko AND make things out of paper. Lately, I've been mostly on taiko and finding my balance tipping... Makes me tippy, whatever that means.

Back to art!