Kawaura Art Space - 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!
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!
As of Thursday, 75 Voices is up at Kawachū. The show is comprised of 75 illustrations by Mark Addison Smith, a New York City-based artist, formerly of Chicago. His artistic practice consists of recording and illustrating overheard snippets of conversations. Everyday he creates at least one illustration, sometimes as much as ten per day.
I'm really excited to be showing his work at the school because not only does it expose the students to common, spoken English, it gives them examples of English voices other than my own. Today, Iigata-sensei, another English teacher, and I stood looking at the pieces for over twenty-minutes, guessing what certain works' context might have been. Next week the students will respond to the pieces as part of English class, choosing one and illustrating a response to it. I can't wait to see what they create.
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木曜日現在で、「75 Voices」は河中で取り付けられている。展示はニューヨーク市（以前にシカゴ）に住んでいるMark Addison Smithという芸術家の７５枚の作品を包含する。彼の芸術的な業務は立ち聞きした会話の部分を記録して描くことです。毎日、少なくても１枚を作ります。ある日に１０枚を作ることもあります。
Markの作品は生徒を俗語の英語を見せるだけではなく、僕以外の英語の声の例を与える。だかれ、僕は彼の作品を見せてとてもわくわくしている。今日、伊形という先生と２５分に作品を見つめて、一緒にある絵の可能な文脈は何かを当てみた。
生徒は来週、英語の授業で返事する。夫々の作品を選んで、返事を描く。僕は生彼らが何を作るかに楽しみしている。
To engage the students with 75 Voices, the exhibition of work by Mark Addison Smith that just finished its run at my middle school, I had them respond to Mark's pieces. Each illustration by Mark comes from a snippet of conversation he hears in his everyday life. So, as an optional English assignment, I asked students to choose one piece and imagine either the proceeding or following sentence in that conversation.
Twelve students participated, including some who usually show no interest in English. I especially liked the abstract interpretation by M. Shimasaki who imaged Mark's piece "Yes yes yes. No no no." as the silent conversations we have with ourselves.
I displayed their pieces side by side with Mark's for the remaining two weeks of the exhibition.
I put up Inside the Head of Jeremy Sorese (ジェレミ・ソリスの頭の中）on December 18th at Kawaura Jr. High School, one of my schools . It features pages of his sketchbook drawn while he was living in Europe last year. I'm excited to be sharing his outstanding work with the students for the remainder of the month.
I installed Impress (痕跡を) on May 2nd at Kawaura Jr. High School. It features intricately hand embroidered pieces by Jenna Goeringer, an artist based in Naperville, IL. I originally saw her large piece, Void, at an exhibition in my hometown a few years ago, and its haunting image stuck with me. Each of her pieces are meticulously crafted and fascinating to look at. Most of the ones pictured above are shown backwards, so that their loose ends are visible. Impress is the sixth and final exhibition of contemporary art I've put up at my school, and I feel like it's a good one to go out on. With the students' enjoyment of each exhibition, I felt I succeeded at my lifelong goal as an art worker: to bring the pleasure of art to new audiences.