zacharytrebellas - Zachary Trebellas
Zachary Trebellas

276 posts

Zachary Trebellas. (Who Would I Be In Tokyo?). Text On 35mm Photograph. 2015.

Zachary Trebellas. (Who Would I Be In Tokyo?). Text On 35mm Photograph. 2015.

Zachary Trebellas. 東京の私はどういう人かな (Who would I be in Tokyo?). Text on 35mm photograph. 2015.

One reason I left Japan after two years was I missed communities I’d been a part of in the US, namely the art community and other Quakers. In rural Amakusa there was little art world to speak of beyond the ceramics community, though I did become friends with a few of them. And after four years of regular attendance at Friends meetings in Illinois, I basically gave that all up for two years in Japan.

But in August I discovered that I didn’t have to go home to regain those things, I could just go to Tokyo. I hadn’t been there since age twenty, and I spent a week there before my return flight. In Tokyo I found the things I’d been missing about the US. A friend and I visited a large artist studio complex one day, and I checked out a grass-roots art festival in Yokohama the next. The Sunday before my return, I made my way to the Tokyo Friends Meeting and met Japanese Quakers for the first time. I even came out of the meeting with an interview offer at the Tokyo Friends School. 

Rural Japan always felt like a cultural compromise, but in Tokyo I didn’t have to give so much up. I never imagined I’d live there, but now, I wonder.

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This piece is part of the series I’m working on, Nippo Greco American, exploring my relationship with the three ethnic groups I in some way identify with. 

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More Posts from Zacharytrebellas

10 years ago
Zachary Trebellas. Guilty By Association/. Manipulated Sailor Moon Screen Shot And Text. 2015.Left Text:
Zachary Trebellas. Guilty By Association/. Manipulated Sailor Moon Screen Shot And Text. 2015.Left Text:

Zachary Trebellas. Guilty by Association/共謀による刑事罰. Manipulated “Sailor Moon” screen shot and text. 2015. Left text: Shut the #¥&! up! Right text: ¥#$&ing idiot! I’d hoped to put some hand written elements into this piece, but my scanner is not cooperating today, so I had to go all digital.


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9 years ago
The Draft Of A Pattern Im Working On For A Collage. The Colors Were Inspired By This Video By Gesu No
The Draft Of A Pattern Im Working On For A Collage. The Colors Were Inspired By This Video By Gesu No

The draft of a pattern I’m working on for a collage. The colors were inspired by this video by Gesu no Kiwami Otomé. It will be fun to test out other scales and color combinations, though.


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10 years ago
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To
Last Weekend My Housemate And I Drove An Hour To West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd Never Been To

Last weekend my housemate and I drove an hour to West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd never been to any of Michigan's sand dunes before and had no idea they would look so alien. Our journey to and from the lakefront was challenging. At times we had to climb over steep sand and ice on our hands and knees. Initially, the dunes themselves were tall and vast, like a snowy desert. Pressing on, we encountered barely rooted trees sticking out of the sand, then an intermediary landscape of frozen sand, and then slick, treacherous ridges made of large balls of ice fused together. I'd heard from someone that they were created by waves successively freezing on top of each other. Lake Michigan itself was just as bizarre as the other landscapes. The water had somehow frozen and broken into thousands of huge triangular shards. They looked like broken windows. If we listened quietly in the near silence we could hear the ice cracking.  My camera doesn't do well with low light, so the film didn't come out as clear as I'd hoped, but it's nice to have some kind of evidence of what it looked like before it begins to melt.


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9 years ago

I whipped this up the other day to celebrate the fact that I’m back in the etsy game. Check out my shop if you’re curious!

New Items All This Month.

New items all this month.


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10 years ago

I’ve been taking a hiatus from participatory art because I’m tired of the success of a project being in the hands of other people. I have to rely on unreliable people enough in other parts of my life, I’d rather not have to deal with that in my art, at least for now. I’m a social person, so I’m naturally inclined to make social work, but for now I like the control of having a project that I can do all by myself.