I Whipped This Up The Other Day To Celebrate The Fact That Im Back In The Etsy Game. Check Out My Shop

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.

UICA TRAILER

↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑ A new commercial made by my coworkers on a budget of $0 to promote our workplace, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, MI. I’ve got just one month left before my temporary position there runs out, but I’m happy to have learned so much these past four months. Working in museum education has been a dream come true.

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.

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.

------

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. 

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.

Zachary Trebellas. Summer/Natsu, study. Scanogram. 2015.

This is a study for one of the pieces I have planned focusing on the Japanese habits that have replaced my American ones. With this one I wanted to focus on the Japanese custom of wrapping a damp towel around one’s neck in the summer to keep cool. It is so tricky to get the composition right when scanning yourself, though. I’ve done other shots where I simulate sweat by spritzing the scan bed with water. It works sometimes, but it’s a lot of trial and error. I guess I just have to keep at it. —— This 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.