When I had an opportunity to travel to Japan for two weeks to attend the 11th International Shibori Symposium, intuitively I felt it was an important opportunity. Focused on the textile arts and natural dye history of Japan, I opted for the Symposium’s first half and then also made the decision to take the Inland Sea Tour, which explored contemporary art sites. I would also be in the same area where Ando Hiroshige developed his famous woodcuts. It was an incredible, deeply felt experience, and I describe it in six blog posts on my website.
Anyone who is a practitioner or student of textiles, paper and ceramics eventually comes to an exploration of Japanese art. It’s been a strong theme throughout my own artistic development, but there have been several divergent threads.*
Moving forward, a few weeks after my trip. I could tell that something was “brewing.” All week, my small bits of studio work had been restless. I hadn’t been able to pick up the momentum I had before leaving for Japan.
With a no-paperwork designated day, I launched in for a longer studio “explore”. First stop: let go. Remove and reposition what’s on the walls. Explore the drawers. Touch and feel. Which direction? Tarps: big, bold, expressive, KABOOM, Shostakovich. Or scrolls: small, meditative, sensitive, drawn from nature, medieval chants. Both have their place in my personal universe.
The simple act of letting go starts to unleash a flow of thoughts. The first impression I’m bringing back from Japan is not the exquisiteness of shibori and natural dye. It’s the screens with oversized black and white calligraphy in the famous Ryoan-ji Zen Buddhist temple. It’s the circular motifs in a commercial scarf I purchased. Circles are everywhere, but especially right now.
I’ve long been conflicted about my own impulse for a calligraphic style created with paint or ink and brush. Do my own gestures “say” something? Are they appropriating? In deciding whether to go to Japan, I intuitively felt I needed to see this gesture up close, imbedded in the culture.
The scrolls and the scarf are illuminating. Today I realized a way to express and enhance my own iconography while deeply respecting what I’ve seen. My own language is about the gestures of drawing and form. It is different. And where I may have seen many circles, mine are more about cherries. Or apples. Botanical variation.
What I observed is that Japan seems just as dual-natured as I am. It’s loud and bold, with Times Square-like sensory and auditory overload of neon, video and calligraphic imagery combined with standard commercial motifs. It’s massive and concrete in the cities with little green space. Its architecture can be POW! And yet, it’s also quiet, with an intense expression of the natural world, stone, light, dark. Nuances of flavor. Tactile. Design. Natural dyes. Fish. Sensory in a different way.
On a studio day, I need to ask myself: are you thinking Shostakovich, or Bach. Usually I say Bach, but often I really need Shostakovich, fire and red.
And all of that is OK. It’s not conflict. It’s a different means to the same end.
I’m so glad I made the trip.
*While an undergrad at Indiana University, I was lucky enough to study the history of the Japanese print in a graduate seminar with Theodore Bowie, his last semester teaching. Besides being able to handle actual sketchbooks by Hokusai and HIroshige, we also explored Lady Murasaki’s Pillow Book, and my research paper was a actually a creative project exploring drawing. He told us we had no reading assignments but he just expected us to read as much as we could. We respected him so much that we did exactly that. Later, explorations included Japanese packaging, textile techniques (Tsutusgaki and others) at Surface Design Association’s Pacific Rim conference in Seattle. Then, I let it go and pushed on in other directions.