Kawaura - Tumblr Posts
With the blessing of the art teacher, I've carved out a spot in Kawaura Jr. High School for use as a contemporary art space. In this rural area of Japan there are few opportunities for people to see contemporary art; Besides a small local museum, the nearest art museums are over two hours away. So, I'm excited to bring more art into the students' lives and use the space to educate them about contemporary art practices as well.
With that said, I'm calling the little space the Kawaura Art Space or 河浦展示場 and am starting to contact and look for artists to exhibit. What's especially exciting about the space is that I can expand it greatly if need be. Right now I prepped 9' x 6' of wall, but it could be 12' x 6', 24' x 6' or even greater. I put a permalink to it on here under Art Space. I can't wait to start putting work up!
In October, I asked three friends of mine if they could make Thanksgiving-themed fill-in-the-blank comics for my 9th grade Japanese class. One month later, Jon Wolfe, Jeremy Sorese, and Chris Sutton, two sequential art graduates and an art history graduate from SCAD, sent me their comics. I gave the students hand outs with the story of the first Thanksgiving and explained it in English class. Then I let them choose which ones they wanted to fill in, and had them write in Japanese. After that, I translated all their bubbles into English, and they erased their Japanese and filled them back in. A lot of the comics wound up being pretty similar, but there were a good amount of standouts as well. I've put the top three up above, including the yellow one which was too inappropriate for me to put up at school. It was my favorite, as despite its craziness, it turned out to be created by one of the most mild mannered students. I never would've guessed. Overall I was really happy to give the students an opportunity to let loose and was amazed at the humor and surprises they added to the comics.
Nathan Vernau. Response Ability, 2011. Colored pencil, cut paper Tomorrow I'm putting up Little Victories, an exhibition of work by Nathan Vernau at Kawachū. He's a favorite artist of mine, and I'm extremely excited to show his work to the school.
I spent all of today working on the show: translating Nathan's statements about his process and symbols into 9th grade level English and then into Japanese, printing out labels and text, and so on. It's the kind of work I love to do, especially when the artwork is so exciting.
Exhibition pictures will be up on Wednesday.
Little Victories is up as of January 9th! It will be on display at Kawaura Junior High (Kawachū) until February 11th. The work is by Nathan Vernau, who's been one of my favorite artists since I first encountered his work at the Next fair in Chicago in spring of 2011. I'm more than excited to be showing his pieces at my middle school!
The students in my school have very little real life exposure to contemporary art, so I wanted to really humanize and explain the show to them. Thus, I included a picture of the artist and his studio, as well as a description of the process and themes of his work. Nathan's pieces encourage the viewer to come up with their own interpretation of the works' meaning as it might relate to their lives. I knew this could be difficult for students with little practice viewing conceptual art, so I created a viewing guide and posted my personal interpretation of one of the works to help them out. I worked to write everything in both 9th grade level English and Japanese.
So far the students I've spoken with are enjoying the work. An 8th grader who loves to draw called them beautiful. My next goal is to reach out to the local high schools to see if some of their students would be interested in seeing the pieces. You can find more of Nathan's work here and read an interview I did with him last year here.
In early February I installed the work of Kari Kraus, a fabric installation artist whose process is influenced by shibori, a Japanese dying technique. To put up her work, I had to become something of an installation artist myself, re-interpreting her work for Kawachū's unique walls. While Kari normally uses pins on dry wall, I had to work with magnets on paper-covered metal.
For the exhibition, Kari visited Kawachū as well as Shingo Elementary and together we held shibori workshops with the students. I then installed their work as part of the exhibition. Next month I'm sending the work to Kari in my hometown in the US to be reinterpreted and installed by local jr. high students. I can't wait to see what they come up with!
The "Before I Die" wall went up on 9/7 with the surprise help of local post office workers and an elderly bar owner. Day by day it continues to fill up. Living in a spread out town of 5,000, I never thought people would take to it so quickly, but I'm so happy they have. Check out the construction shots and get more info here.
Kumamoto Nichi Newspaper. October 25, 2013.
"Before I die I want to..." Written on a blackboard placed at the Kawaura-machi Nakamura Community Center are those words along with the hopes of local residents. Zachary Johnson, twenty-five from Illinois in the US, working as an assistant language teacher in Kawaura, created the wall. According to Johnson, it's part of a public art project which began in New Orleans, US. In over forty countries, various people have installed the same kind of project, he said. Some hopes written by Kawaura residents were, "I want to become rich", "I want to have lots of dogs", etc. Johnson stated, "I want to give people a way to express the dreams they normally keep silent." The piece can be seen until the 29th.
I wrapped up the Before I Die project two weeks ago today. Throughout the month I was surprised at the speed at which the wall filled up -- about every two days. The responses came mostly from young students, and it was a great joy to read their responses. Though they've grown up on an isolated, struggling island, their dreams were filled with the humor, warmth, and excitement I would expect from children anywhere. I was happy to give them and other people a chance to speak about their dreams. The project is featured permanently on the Before I Die website.
Six draft pages from autumn 2013 edition of The Yoka, a publication by and for JET Program participants in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. I developed the color scheme from local wild flowers which I threw under the scanner. I'll post the finished publication when it's released later this month.