Fragmentation: Red-tailed Black Cockatoos 分解化 赤尾黒オウム

My most recent artwork was breaking new ground for me in several ways. It's the largest work I've made so far, it's the first time I've dyed predominantly black birds and it's visually different from my previous pieces.

一番最近の作品は幾つかの理由で私には斬新でした。今までに作った物で一番大きいし、ほとんど黒の鳥を染めるのが始めてだし、デザイン的には前の作品とちょっと違う感じでした。

Let me show you the final piece and then I'll tell you a bit more about it. 

作品を見せてから作品の話しをさせていただきます。

Here it is on show last week at Gallery Fleur in Kyoto Seika University, as part of an exhibition held by 1st year Master's students of the Art & Design Graduate Schools. 

これは、先週行われていた「京都精華大学大学院一年生展」に展示していた様子です。

"Fragmentation: Red-tailed Black Cockatoos" 2014. katazome and yuzen resist techniques on linen. 6 panels of 60x180cm. 「分解化・赤尾黒鸚鵡」　型染、友禅、他。麻地6枚。

This work as displayed at the 1st Year's Masters Exhibition last week. To the left you see the work of my Textiles classmate Kiko Takahashi and in front is the work of Endo Ryotaro. 「大学院1年生展」での展示。左側に同級生の染織専攻高橋紀子の作品です。前景に、陶芸専攻の遠藤良太郎の作品です。

One thing I felt from my last exhibited works at Rissei Elementary School was that they would have had more impact if they were bigger. It always feels as if the work is enormous when you are making it, thanks in part to the detail involved, and the way you have to reach and use your body but then you display it on a wall and realize with dismay that it's actually not that big. 

11月元・立成小学校で作品を展示した時に気づいたのが、j作っているところは大きく感じるが、やっと壁にかけて、離れて見るとがっかりするぐらい小さくみえることでした。

when you are working on it in 6 pieces (only 4 visible here) the work feels enormous! こういう風に6枚に分けたら（ここで4枚しか見えないけど）、作品がものすごく大きく感じるんですね！

So I tried going bigger this time and in the end the work cam out to be 180cm tall by 360cm wide. Because of fabric width limitations and also because I enjoy the movement of fabric in spaces, the work is made up of 6 free hanging panels of a lightweight natural-coloured linen fabric. 

というわけで、今回の作品は横360センチかく縦180センチです。使いたっかった生地の幅や、空気に揺れる生地の感じが好きということで、60センチ幅の麻地を6枚合わせた作品です。

see the way the design is split over a set of panels. Japanese viewers are used to this format thanks to folding screens and noren split curtains. こんな感じでデザインが何枚かに流れています。日本では屏風やのれんなどに見える方法です。

In my work to date, I have been exploring depicting birds in flight and trying to give a sense of movement. This time I attempted to add to that effect with a grid of diagonal lines in the background. This background fades out slowly towards the left side. 

今までの作品では、動き感や時間の流れを感じさせるように、飛んでいる鳥をよく染めます。ここでそれをより深く感じるために、背景に斜線でできているグリッドを入れてみました。鳥の方向に沿って、背景の色はだんだん薄くなっていきます。

飛んでいる鳥の表情が一番好きです。I like the expressions and shapes of birds in flight the best

I titled the work "fragmentation: Red-tailed Black Cockatoos" (I don't much like titling work, it can sound so arrogant) because the south-eastern strain (Calyptorhynchus banksii graptogyne) of the Red-tailed black cockatoo is now endangered and this is in part due to deforestation and fragmentation of eucalyptus habitat. As at 2013, less than 1200 birds were counted by volunteers in South Eastern Australia. See this website for more information. 

タイトルというと(本当はタイトルを付けるのがあんまり好きじゃないけど) 

「分解化・赤尾黒鸚鵡」なんです。アカオクロオウム属では、5種類がいます。オーストラリアの東南に生きる種類(Calyptorhynchus banksii graptogyne)は絶滅危惧種になっています。2013年、ボランティアによる調査でオーストラリアの東南に1200以下の鳥が数えられました。

In terms of technique, this time I combined hand drawn yuzen resist (the cockatoos), katazome stencil resist (the Eucalyptus leaves silhouettes in the background) and dyeing directly on the fabric with the help of some clever masking.  

技法については、この作品に三つの染め方が混ぜ合わせています。オウムは友禅でそめていて、背景の葉っぱが型染めのもので、幾何学的な背景はマスキングしながら直接染めた所です。

The birds are dyed with the thin resist lines of yuzen and the leaves and gumnuts in the background were applied with a hand-cut stencil - katazome.　オウムは友禅の細い線で染めました。背景にある葉っぱや実は型染のしゃっきりとした線で表現したかったです。

here you can see the soft gradients I dyed in the background, using slightly thickened dye, a big soft brush and lots of masking tape. ぼかしのところをテープと染料と糊剤と丸刷毛で染めました。

I had some good feedback on this piece at last week's exhibition and I'm happy with the direction this artwork is taking me in. 

6枚の生地をバラバラにして作業しましたから、展示した時は自分で始めて見ている気持ちでした。お客様や先生ににいいコメントをもらいました。自分の中でも、この作品が向かっている方向が好きで、次のステップをワクワクしています。

My work in Gallery Fleur alongside work by 1st year Master in the Japanese Painting Department, Hiroko Kanayama. ギャラリーフロールで日本画専攻の金山ひろこの隣でした。

Already turning the mental cogs about the next big piece and I'm thinking FLOCKS! Big swarming flocks of parrots! Very exciting. Stay tuned :)

次に大きい作品を作るときのアイデアはもうあふれています。「群」について考え中です！インコの鮮やかなでっかい群！いいでしょう？楽しみにしてください☆

My Very Own Folding Screen is Being Exibited! 屏風が新匠工芸会展に入選～

I previously did a post showing the end result of my Major Mitchell's Cockatoo 2 panel work. Here's a quick reminder of the work I'm talking about. 前に、大きなオウムの作品ができたと書きました。覚えっていないなら、この作品のことです。

This one! これだ！

At that stage, the work was simply two fabric panels; not really made into anything complete yet. At my review, several of my teachers suggested getting the work made into an authentic Japanese folding screen. I knew this would be expensive but agreed that it would be a nice solution and it suits the style of the piece.
その時は、染め終わったのけれど、まだ生地のままで、完成している作品とは言えませんでした。合評の時、教授が屏風にしたらいいんじゃないかと言われました。高いと思いながら、確かにこの作品は屏風になりそうな感じだねと理解していました。

In order to submit the piece to a public submissions competitive exhibition, a friend of my professor's was able to make the piece into a screen in a record breaking week. (normally these things take months!) I was very lucky he could do it at such short notice. It is only a basic screen (as that is all I can afford as a student) but I'm very happy with how it turned out. Have a look:
公募展に出したかったので、先生の友達である表具屋さんがいつもより短い期間で作ってくれました。すごいラッキーです！出来上がった屏風は大好きです。こんな感じです。

The screen opened out flat. 平面的に見ると。

But actually it would be displayed like this, with a slight angle. でも、本当はこのように展示しますね。

Soon after the screen was completed, I applied to the textiles section of the "Shinshokougeikai 67th Annual Public Submission Exhibition" (I suppose you could translate Shinshoukougeikai as New Artisan's Craft Association). I wasn't sure it would make the cut as it's a bit out there and not many foreigners seem to get their work accepted (or perhaps they just don't apply). BUT!! Last night I got a postcard in the mail to say my work has been accepted into the exhibition!! (Letting you know by postcard: how old school is that?)
This means my work will be displayed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum this week until Sunday and then the exhibition comes to the Kyoto City Art Gallery Annex from November 7th-11th. All very exciting!

出来上がった後、すぐ「新匠工芸会展」の染色分門に応募しました。昨日、入選されたというはがきが来ました！すごくうれしいです！今週は東京都美術館で展示されていますが、１１月７日～１１日は京都市美術館の別館で展示されます。時間がある方、見に行ってくださいね！

This is the website of the Shinshokougekai Association : http://www.shinsyoukougeikai.jp/ It's in Japanese but you can click on the button to the right of the HOME button and drop down menu lets you see images and prize winners from previous exhibitions.
上に書いてある新匠工芸会のホームページで以前の展覧会の様子や受賞の人などが見えます。

The Major Mitchell's Live!

After almost 3 months, I finally completed the piece I have been working on.

This time around I wanted to see if I could sucessfully combine the techniques of katazome and yuzen-zome (hand-drawn resist) in the one artwork. I was also hoping to depict birds in a lively way; to show them as if jumping off the fabric. I took a lot of inspiration from the world of nihon-ga Japanese Painting with regards to style, composition, and ideas about empty space. I'm pretty happy with how it has turned out. What do you think?

tentative title : 車冠鸚鵡図　Major Mitchell's Cockatoos

I'm still deciding what to call this work but I really like the Kanji for Major Mitchell's Cockatoo (yes! there is a kanji!) 車冠鸚鵡 (read as Kurumasaka Omu くるまさかオウム) so I think I might work that in there.
 The work is comprised of two fabric panels. I'm yet to decide how I will finish it, whether as two hanging fabric panels, as a folding screen (this would be the most expensive option!), or some other solution.

Here are a few details of the work and then I will give you some process photos so you can see how I went about producing this.

1. Sketching and preparing a design

I wrote previously about how much of a challenge this step was for me. It took a long period of sketching, rearranging, painting, cutting up, putting back together etc to get to what  you see at left.




2. Cutting a stencil for the katazome areas

I really like this step; it's sort of relaxing to just sit and cut out the small shapes with a cutter knife for a few solid days. I used the stencil to create the eucalyptus tree area of the design as I felt katazome is perfect for creating silhouette-like effects.






3. Apply resist paste with the stencil and dye the katazome areas

I used my stencil to apply the resist paste to the two panels of silk fabric. The paste is dried, hardens, and I used small flat brushes to apply a chemical dye-stuff onto the fabric. The fabric was steamed and washed and you can see what was left.

4. Filling in the gaps with hand-drawn resist paste

Using a resist paste made with rice flour and rice bran, I applied fine lines of resist onto my fabric. I chose to do the cockatoos and flowers in the design using this yuzen-zome technique because it allows a lot of fine detail and a sense of movement.






5. Yuzen-zome dyeing stage

Slowly but surely filling in all the areas using multiple brushes and applying dye in gradients. Once complete, the fabric gets steamed again.






6. Fuse-nori Covering resist paste/7. Background Dyeing

Another layer of resist paste is applied as a mask over the dyed areas to protect them and once that's dry the background colour can be dyed onto the fabric. In this case I used a water sprayer and some large brushes to create a pale yellow sky colour with gradation. After that I used some smaller brushes to fill in the ground and water areas. One final steam and wash and it's finally done!




In other exciting news...I have had two of my textiles made into traditional Japanese kakejiku (hanging scrolls). They look great! I am yet to show them to my professors. Will do that this week and put up some photos of the finished scrolls. Something to look forward to!

The Struggle.

How long does it take to design an artwork?...how long is a piece of string?

I have spent the last 5 WEEKS (!!) struggling with a design for a new two panel textiles work. This is the longest I have ever taken to create a design and its killing me! I love to sketch and fiddle around with paint but large scale drawing and composition is just not my strong point. I'm so ready to move on to the fun steps of cutting a stencil, making print paste and dyeing but I can't until I've got this foundation step right.

It's been an eye opening experience. I've added sections. Taken parts away. Cut it up. Pasted on new bits. Painted colours in. Started all over again. Moved parts around. Made it bigger. Doubted the idea itself. Taken confidence. Almost reached an end point.

various stages of incompleteness

In my designing despair, I came across this heartening video. It's from an interview with writer Ira Glass, where he says that artists starting out need to keep on creating even though they feel what they are producing is inadequate.

Hopefully, the time spent on getting this design right will mean that the resulting artwork will be mostly sastifying. I will post images here as the work finally, at last, at length, gets off the ground.

Kacho-ga 花鳥画 - The Art of Birds & Flowers

There is a genre in traditional Japanese painting called 花鳥画 kachou-ga, which literally translated means 'a painting of birds and flowers'. It has its roots in Chinese painting traditions where themes of natural beauty were highly valued. I've been reading about kachou-ga because my textiles are also essentially paintings of birds and flowers.

There are some things that are inherent in a kachou-ga that make it more than a mere image of a flower of bird or animal. These things are hard to define but according to Uemura Atsushi, a famous Japanese painter from a lineage of famous painters, the following is a clincher:

"Depicting natural phenomena as is doesn't make something a painting. To produce a work of art, the artist must give shape to the world he imagines in his own mind and heart" (forgive the translation)

Folding Screen by Suzuki Kiitsu, "White Crane & Willow Tree"

Another Japanese painter, Kawaguchi Naoyoshi, says that if an artist is to paint kachou-ga , they should not be painting the true to life external appearance of a subject but incorporating their own feelings and spirit into the work.

Also, Uemura adds that a frequent ingredient in kachou-ga is 「余白」yohaku, meaning "blank space". He says that it is by incorporating blank space in a work, the artist is hinting at this otherworldliness.

From the series "Birds & Flowers of the Twelve months" by Sakai Houitsu. Left: October. Right: September.

There's still a lot to read about kachou-ga but these are some of the most fundamental ideas.

I'm currently planning new work that follows some of the kachou-ga  styles and ideas, this time depicting Major Mitchell's Cockatoos. I'm still in the sketching and designing stage.

Also here's a few images from this week at school. I put up all the pieces I had finished during the spring break to show my professors. They were very positive and encouraging which was nice.

Gang-Gang Cockatoos - Sadly Misunderstood

I am thinking about my next works and would like to try and dye some Gang-gang Cockatoos. They are the "faunal emblem" of Canberra and feature also in the ACT Parks and Conservation Service logo.

They are such gorgeous birds to look at; the male has this fantastic red hairdo while the female is completely grey with specks of orangey-red. Whilst pretty they are also famed for their "unique" call. The ACT government website speaks fondly of its faunal emblem, stating "Their call is a distinctive sound resembling the sound of a squeaking gate." Others describe it as a squeaky cork coming out of a bottle.

Male Gang-Gang Cockatoo

Here's a little snippit I found in an 1887 London publication called "Parrots in Captivity". This is an excerpt by the snooty sounding F.G. Dutton about his lacklustre encounter with his first real Gang-gang.



"The most rasping and aggravating of all Cockatoo cries.." Ah-hah-hah! I can just see him choking on his cup of tea as he heard its cry for the first time. I think its a charming little voice that they have and SO much less aggravating than the flocks of screaming Sulfur-crested Cockatoos.

Detail of painting by Shimomura Kanzan. "Ancient Pine Trees and White Wisterias" 1921

In terms of scale, I am trying to make bigger works but its always so daunting on how to go about filling such a large space. I saw some of Shimomura Kanzan's paintings last week at the library and like his use of framing. He tends to cut off the tops and bottom of the frame and focus on a central horizontal plane. I'd love to do a long horizontal piece with a slither of gum tree showing, full of birds. My next challenge...

Parrots. インコ、音呼、鸚哥

The Japanese term for the Parrot family is inko. Nowadays it's written in katakana but it also has a few Kanji (although they are unused) 音呼、鸚哥...
Most bird names are written in katakana or hiragana alphabets now which is kind of a shame because they have these exquisite kanji. Take the following examples...
cockatoo, oumu 鸚鵡
cassowary, hikuidori 火食鳥 (this kanji literally means fire-eating bird!)
eagle, washi 鷲
flamingo, beniduru 紅鶴
Japanese nightingale, uguisu 鶯
kingfisher, kawasemi 翡翠
wren, misosazai 鷦鷯

Maybe it's just me?

I've been back into sketching in preparation for some new projects.

Crimson Rosella. Whose Kanji by the way is impossible to find but its Japanese name is akakusainko



Upside down! Rainbow lorikeet, a.k.a 五色青灰鸚哥 goshiki-seigai-inko!!

The next step is to turn my sketches into something textiles and magnificent! (the hard part!!) Will keep you updated as my design ideas progress...

New Discoveries - There's Cockatoos in Indonesia?!

Its been a long time between posts.
I am now very lucky to be in Kyoto, as a Research Student on a Japanese government scholarship. (!!)
I'll be here for two years, studying Katazome and Art history. As a means to getting this scholarship, I had to submit a convincing research proposal. My initial propsal was to research the depiction of Australian Birds in Japanese Art.

In previous posts you can see some examples of these artworks, showing cockatoos and parrots in ink scrolls and paintings from the early 1800's.

NEWSFLASH! I may have to slightly rethink my research. Let me explain why.

Yes its true there are some really exciting and interesting artworks in Japanese art and textiles which depict Cockatoos, parrots and exotic foreign birds. My initial suspicion was that these birds were brought to Japan by Dutch traders. So far, this seems true.

The Dutch were (apart from a small community of Chinese) the only foreigners permitted to trade with Japan during its self-imposed "closed country" period in the 1700 and 1800's. From what I have read so far, the Dutch brought new and strange objects to Japan to trade but also brought exotic birds and animals at the request of the Shogun and as gifts. Including.....cockatoos I suspect.

During this period that the Dutch were trading with Japan, they operated a Colony out of Java (or "Batavia"). From there they operated some of their business as the Dutch East India Trading Company. And guess what they have in Indonesia? Parrots! Not only parrots, Cockatoos!! Here we are seeing the white cockatoo as a symbol of the wide brown land but in fact there are a whole lot of different varieties of Cockatoos and many of them are found across the Indonesian islands, New Guinea and neighbouring islands.

Having "discovered" this, I have looked back at the Japanese artworks that first spurred my initial research ideas. Sure enough, they are varieties of Cockatoos found in Indonesia. Check it out:

Parrots and Pine Branch - A fairly famous painting by Ito Jakuchu - early 1800's I think

Probably that's this guy on the right, "Cacatua Alba" or White Cockatoo. Found not in Australia but on Islands at the northern tip of Indonesia.

The green parrot in the top left of Jakuchu's painting is probably the male green Eclectus Parrot. I already thought this but now I know that the Eclectus parrot is found across Indonesia, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and ALSO the very northern tip of AUSTRALIA!

How about these paintings?



Not sure, but they could be the one in the middle, "Amboina King Parrot" found... you guessed it northern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomons...


Despite these slightly disappointing revelations, there are still artworks that have to be Australian birds. Well at least, I'm not yet convinced otherwise. For example, the print below looks like a Crimson Rosella to me (an ugly one!!!), and they definitely don't occur in Indonesia.



Crimson Rosella (Centre)

So what does all this mean? Well, my observation of exotic birds in Japanese art still stands true but the bird's homelands still needs some more research. Certainly, it makes sense that the Dutch would have taken birds from their colony of "Batavia" and surrounds to Japan. I wonder if whether later in the 1800's any Australian birds were exported directly from Australia? Apparently budgerigars (native to central Australia) were first taken to England in 1840 by John Gould so its possible this kind of export took place to Asia as well. There's alot more to look into, and this is just the first step.

Happy Mittens!

My happy new mittens i knitted. (is that the past tense of knit?)

If only it were icy cold instead of 34c and 80% humidity so that I could wear them!

In other news, I was sent this image a few weeks back of a Dutch still life painting. Haven't had a chance to research it properly yet but it looks interesting indeed.

Birds of Canberra

I picked up this great book yesterday, called "Birds of Canberra Gardens". It's put together by the Canberra Ornithologists Group and its great because it lists all the birds that have been spotted and recorded in the area of Canberra.

Some of them are soooo cute. Like the Gang-gang cockatoo. See the cover:

Don't you just want to tickle him under the chin?

I bought the book because its an authorative list on the birds in Canberra, and in my artwork I specifically want to depict birds which are local to my region. I have seen lots of the birds in the book before but some of them are very low in numbers and I've never seen anything like them before. For example this little guy:

(Photo (c) Max Sutcliffe) So cute! I don't think anyone would believe me if I told them that such a colour existed in wild birds. Hot pink!! Apparently this robin usually lives in rainforests.

Maybe this little guy will turn up in my textiles in the future...

Another World - Ito Jakuchu 伊藤若冲

I've mentioned the paintings of Ito Jakuchu here before. Yesterday I was lucky enough to see a major exhibition of his works at the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art. The exhibition was called "Another World".

It was incredible. It was one of those exhibitions where you've seen their work in a book or something before and thought it was nice or ok. But then you get a chance to see it up close and in real life and you see a whole new side to it. For me, it was seeing the detail in his paintings. The way he depicted individual feathers or added texture to leaves was really interesting.

The paintings I was most interested in and had been hoping to see, where those of Cockatoos.

This ink painting is from 1771!!! And don't try telling me that's not a cockatoo, because it is!

Here's another one, not sure what year it is from but Jakuchu died in 1800 so it had to be before that.

And finally this round one from 1782

I'm dying to know where he (and others around the same era) got these images from. Were these birds brought to Japan by dutch traders? Are these images copied from paintings done by others? Did he really see a cockatoo or was he using his imagination? These are things I really want to look into.

Free Cockatoos or Dead ones?

How to bring fauna to life in a stencil image?? Its a hard thing to achieve movement in a design thats destined for a katazome stencil, because the stencil cutting process has a say in what you can do. ie. Lines need to join together so the whole thing doesnt fall apart!

Anyway, heres some examples of Cockatoos in Japanese art looking lifeless...

Left is a painting by Ito Jakuchu. Maybe the reason the bird looks lifeless is because it's chained to a perch!?

Or how about this Obi (sash that gets tied around a kimono)? At least this one looks like it's free to fly around...

But add flight perhaps?

Imagine that on an obi! I know I'd wear it...