I Got Interviewed About My Omoidemari For The Newspaper!Decorating With Red Temari

I got interviewed about my Omoidemari for the newspaper! Decorating with Red Temari

Zachary Johnson (26), ALT of Kawaura Jr. High School from Illinois, US, is planning a participatory, public art project for the Ushibuka Haiya Festival on the 19th and 20th. He will be distributing red temari to those in attendance with the intent of having them decorate the area of the festival. Johnson came to Japan two years ago. From the experience of majoring in art history in college, he has held events such as a young comic artist exhibition with the intent of having the people of Amakusa enjoy art. Next, inspired by the depopulation of Amakusa, he plans to acquaint people with the places where locals hold memories as well as where visitors have felt the good points of Ushibuka. Currently, he’s in the middle of making three hundred red temari, which he calls Omoidemari (a combination of the word memory, omoide, and temari), inspired by Amakusa’s traditional craft, namban temari. His hope is for people to place thepiecesin their favorite locations in downtown Ushibuka, affixing them with messages about their memories of those places. He plans to distribute them at the Haiya Festival as well as through tourist locations. “I hope the red temari can catch peoples’ eyes and be a chance to create new activity”, said Johnson.

Satoru Ishimoto. Kumamoto Nichi Newspaper. April 10. 2014.

This is the 9th grade version of the April edition of the English newsletter I make for my students. This time I focused on Easter and the idea of language families. I wanted to show students that as they learn English, they're unconsciously gaining knowledge in other related languages as well. I also included a French video called Tokyo Reverse, which I thought they'd be into and a bit about Ukiyo Heroes, which is an awesome project where two Americans make traditional ukiyo e style woodblock prints of Nintendo characters. You can get a PDF of the newsletter here.

A few pages of a 20-page spring newsletter I designed for the Kumamoto Association of JET. I started each of the page elements by hand and then edited them digitally. I decided to go in a different direction from the autumn edition I did last fall and really enjoyed the process.

The first image was created by scanning and manipulating the elements of the second. Second image: Zebra pen, marker, typed text on construction paper. 2014.

A flyer for a dance party I'm throwing next month.

More thoughts about where my life's headed right now. Click high res to read my text at the bottom. The image was scanned from a 1970's Japanese English text book.