1988: Dry, Dry Summer

September 6. 1988
Kyoto

Dear Friends:

With the arrival of September in Japan we have signs that the hot summer weather is coming to an end. The insistent song of the semi (cicadas) fills the hot air with reminders that the worst of summer heat has passed and the fall school terms are about to begin. These past two months have been unusually rainy this year. There was the usual tsuyu (rainy season) in June and July and just when the forecasters said it was officially over, we would have a few more days of rain. At times I feel like I’m living in the tropics with daily afternoon rain showers — sometimes violent with thunder and lightening. Consequently the plants have remained healthy and green all summer which is not usually the case.

Before arriving in Tokyo I spent nearly a week in Los Angeles with Page and Jeanne. Page had his summer associate job with the law firm of Graham & James while Jeanne spent her time in writing, research and translation in preparation for her final year of course work and subsequent dissertation. They loved LA. exploring all parts of the city — the museums, music, theatre and traveling the mountains, sea coast and the desert. They lived in west LA and found the weather there pleasant and comfortable even in the hottest weeks. especially while biking along the beach paths south from Santa Monica. Page had a super experience at Graham & James and has accepted their offer of a position when he completes Cornell Law next year after the CA Bar Exam and a trip to Japan and Korea this time next year.

Once in Tokyo I easily slipped back into my old routines. I spent several days with Tomio Sugaya. a writer who was in Athens in March, going to a variety of gallery and museum shows — Hisako Sekijima’s baskets of natural materials in a variety of shapes and sizes. ceramics from utilitarian tea wares to installation works by Ban Kajatani who lives and teaches in Columbus, Ohio and a small show of European (and some Japanese) Art Deco objects at the National Museum of Modern Art Craft Gallery. I just missed this year’s fiber show at the Spiral Garden titled “Archi Texture — From the Horizon of Post Fiber Art”. Perhaps it is just as well as it would be difficult for any show to meet the expectations of a title like that. I did see the catalog and my puzzlement over the title was not lessened although there seemed to be some good work in the show.

I enjoyed staying at International House this time in Tokyo with its large and beautiful garden. I had the room with the best view. I saw Toshiko Horiuchi, Charles and Micah just before they left for the US, Canada, Spain and … for a couple of years. I was able to squeeze in a performance of kabuki at Kabukiza where Tomasaburo was playing an elegant maiden who was hopelessly (always) in love with a gallant from the wrong clan (of course). I gave lectures on my work at Musashino Art University where Hideho Tanaka teaches and at Kawaijuku where Tomio Sugaya teaches. The lectures went well but most rewarding was the exchange with the students who usually sit quietly and say nothing. I had both a good critique of student work and a lively Q and A exchange.

By the end of June, after a brief stop in Nagoya to see the Andos, I was settled back into my house in Daitokuji-cho. All was well here with the new shoot of my bamboo in the garden almost to my second story window. The first week was spent settling into my old ways here including my nightly visits to the nearby sento (public bath). Phone calls and visits to and from friends completed the initial period of return to my summer and fall roost.

The big change for me this year has been the closing of Gallerie Maronie for a year for reconstruction. The building is being torn down and rebuilt with a Georgio Armani boutique on the first floor, the crafts shop on the second and the gallery on the third and fourth. Maronie has always been the center of much art activity with its two new shows weekly and as a meeting place for all sorts of interesting people. Thus, a great void exists. Some of this gap has been filled by Gallery Gallery. a space showing fiber works. The present owner is Keiko Kawashima who is attracting some of the old Maronie crowd. Hiroyuki Shindo had a show there earlier in the summer filling the spaces with many similar boxes wrapped in indigo dyed furoshiki and placed in regular arrangements. Generally, the number of fiber shows this year is greatly reduced but perhaps the fall season will pick up.

The number of visitors this year has been down from the last several years but those who have come have added a spark to life in Kyoto. Richard Jolley and Tommie Rush, glass artists from TN were here in July to attend the opening of an international glass show at the Hokkaido Museum later in the summer. They introduced me to Joanne Chamberlain, assistant to NC glass artist Mark Peiser, who is here in Kyoto for a year to study Japanese. We toured around together, partook of the local specialties, and had good exchanges on the worlds of glass, fiber, America and Japan. Takeshi Asai, formerly a student here in Kyoto, now with IBM Japan in Fukuoka, was here for the Gion Matsuri celebrations in mid-July. It was his first chance to see the procession in many years as the “locals” seldom get involved in that mass of humanity. Hiroyuki Kuno, a native of nearby Shiga-ken and a student now at Georgia SW College, was here teaching Japanese to Americans and spent an afternoon and evening with me visiting my local shrine and temples in the rain, drinking and eating my Japanese cooking, going to sento — enjoying Kyoto life together.

This year finds Japan in the clutches of two “BOOMS” (popular crazes): “dry” and sunflowers. The first was started by Asahi Beer when market research indicated a move toward a lighter draft brew by the young crowd. They launched Asahi “super dry” early in the year followed by a “dry war” when the other three breweries jumped on the “dry” wagon and with the same silver cans and labels. It wasn’t long before the movement spread to other areas and now we have a fast food chain with “dry” (ugh) hamburgers, “dry” fish cakes, “dry” snack food, etc. It seems everything is dry except the weather. The sunflower boom is probably due to the purchase of the Van Gogh painting by an insurance company here. The manifestations include lots of printed fabric for skirts, blouses and carry bags, masses of artificial sunflowers (some on neighborhood altars) and real ones growing in all sorts of unlikely places. An unintended “bomb” was the Sambo and Hanna promotion with black plastic caricature dolls and manikins that were seen about earlier in the summer. A storm of protest and threats of boycotts from the US Black Caucus put the damper on that theme long before it reached even the boomlet stage. One wonders where the Japanese got such ideas. Certainly not from a country that had thousands of Sambo restaurants only a few years ago.

My new work progresses well with themes established, individual design sketches completed and the weaving well underway. The first of the new series should be completed by the end of September if all goes according to my master plan. The works are larger than the previous ones (now 10″ x 30″) and horizontal in format, so I had to develop new kinds of images which this year are from photos taken in both the US and Japan with some intermixing. My image generation depends heavily on copy machines (the Japanese brands are the best) for achieving the strong black and white and the proper scale I need. I beat a steady path to my local bookstore which is open until midnight. In my grid fabrics I have increased the color mix that I began last year and have achieved some subtle kasuri-like effects in the twill weaves. My solo show this year is scheduled for the last week of November at the Fuji Gallery in Osaka. Earlier this summer two of my works were on exhibit in a new acquisitions show at the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto (MOMAK). As I have none of those earlier works here in Kyoto now it was a nice experience to see them in the museum.

I will leave tomorrow for a week’s trip to Hong Kong and Tokyo that will allow me to renew my visa and see old Athens friends John Mayberry and Jim Guthrie, who this year mark 10 years of living in Asia. They are both happily busy designing and furnishing hotels all over the Far East. I’ll spend a few days in Tokyo seeing shows and friends including Masahiro Motoyama my current Japanese “student in residence” in the Athens house, home now to see family and take an architectural exam.

I look forward to the cool and beautiful fall weather, the clearing air around Kyoto, the ripening rice paddies. I’m eager to continue the work begun and get the first works in the new series completed before the color comes to the maples. Here, after all, the work is primary.