2001: Mountains

January 2002
Tucson, AZ

It is early morning in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The foothills of the Rincon Mountains in northern Tucson are bathed in haze and early light. A bevy of Gambel’s quail scurries about beyond the patio with its heavily laden orange and grapefruit trees and drapery of bougainvillea at the home of my cousin, Gloria. The sun brightens and the sky becomes bluer with trailings of thin clouds. It is a quiet, restful but brief respite from a busy life left behind in Athens.

Life this fall and winter of 2001 were unusually busy as I carried out my responsibilities at UGA and at home while preparing for a major exhibition of my work over the last 17 years which has just opened at the Sun Trust Plaza in downtown Atlanta. This John Portman designed Atlanta landmark has a large gallery off a lower level ‘atrium’ that is filled with Portman sculptures and paintings. It has proved to be an ideal setting for my work, which includes representative pieces from each series in metal leaf executed in Kyoto or Athens since 1984. This fall I was busy completing two new installation works for this exhibition inspired by maku, Japanese fabric walls used to mark special places and events. These maku are 10’ x 10’ cubes of fabric panels 6’ high that enclose intensely lit circles of white river stones (The Moon) or pyrite stones (The Sun).

A review of 2001, in reverse: December was a very busy time with completion of classes and final grading, two separate holiday dinner parties for the nearly 30 Fabric Design majors and spouses, Christmas with Page, Jeanne and Lee, now nearly 9, (a Harry Potter Holiday for him) in Athens and Christmas day in Atlanta with them, Jeanne’s sisters and cousin from Seoul at Jeanne’s Mother’s. All of this was interspersed with attendance at concerts, performances and numerous holiday parties with my friend Susan. It was a month of celebration and intense studio work.

(A return to my laptop in the late afternoon offers me a view of one of those memorable Arizona sunsets with its many layers of color, brilliant at the horizon and changing endlessly high into the cloud streaked sky.) November was a busy time with classes and a few hours spent in the studio when the schedule allowed. Thanksgiving break gave me a few more days in the studio, a Grandparents’ Day visit to Lee’s Montessori School, Turkey Day dinner with my Korean graduate student, Sang-Wook, his wife and two children who call me ‘Grandpa Glen’ and a super hike on the weekend with Page, Jeanne and Lee. This was the second year that the four of us made the trek to Hike Inn, located in the North Georgia Mountains and accessible only by foot in about 4.5 hours. It is a delightful complex of buildings that reminds me of Shinto shrine architecture in Japan. Lee remembered that it snowed last year when we made the trip and he expected the same experience this time. It did not happen but we had a delightful family outing, none-the-less. I was invited to participate in an exhibition of Georgia print artists in Atlanta that opened in November and closed in January.

The major event in October was the visit of two dear friends from Japan, Tetsuo and Hiroe Kusama, who spent almost a week in Athens. Tetsuo was investigating commissioned Fiber Art in the US so we made an extensive excursion to Atlanta to see these works as well as galleries and other points of interest. Tetsuo also gave a lecture to our students and spent time with some of the graduate students both at school and at a small party I had at home. It was also the month or our Fall Break and studio work.

September began very pleasantly with a trip to Northern Michigan over Labor Day to see my niece and nephew, Kris and John, in the delightful turn-of-the-century town of Petoskey. We explored the town in great detail, the north woods and Mackinaw Island as well. It was great to be back in the North again as it had been some time since I had been there. Char, Page, Char’s mother and I vacationed nearby often in the 1960’ s and 1970’s. My sister, Karol, and her husband, John, came down from the Upper Peninsula for the weekend and we enjoyed a picnic on the beach, a boat trip on the bay and a pleasant family reunion. Then 9/11 and life changed for all of us. Classes were cancelled by 11:00 and everyone left for home and the unfolding tragedy on television. Perhaps the shock was greatest for those closest to Ground Zero or Washington but all experienced the emotional impact. Page lost one of his Cranbrook School classmates in the WTC. Later in the month I joined an old friend from California for her niece’s wedding at The Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina and we had a thoroughly enjoyable time at the festivities and the many galleries and shops in Ashville. It is a fascinating city in a very beautiful mountain setting.

Japan occupied more of my time in 2001 with three separate trips. The first was in March during our Spring Break to make preparations of the third UGA Study Abroad Program. I added traditional brush painting to the program so many details had to be worked out with the instructors in that class. The rest of the program remained unchanged but there are always final arrangements to be made. The weather was cold but the camellias were blooming in my garden and before I left some of neighbor’s the plum blossoms were popping open. I planted a couple more camellias as they bloom when I am there in March and a small rhododendron, which bloomed before I returned in May. I was able to spend some days in the garden removing some ferns that were taking over too much space and transplanting moss from various locales to add to the clumps already thriving. The ivy I planted when I first moved into the house has completely covered the corrugated iron fence and provides the prefect green curtain at the rear of the garden. My housemate, Jay, from Hawaii, who teaches English at one of the local universities is still with me and takes excellent care of the house when I am away.

I was back in Kyoto in mid-May with the students for the four-week program. The painting class attracted just a few students, which was a disappointment. However, the students in the class had a very good experience and were delighted with the teachers. The fabric class was small but we added to the enrollment with a number of Japanese students. This proved to be a plus for my students by way of additional contact with Japanese artists. Everyone worked very well together. For 2002 we are planning to add ceramics to the program with studio facilities in nearby Shigaraki, an old kiln town with ceramics the prime activity in the community. A colleague at UGA who has had experience in Japan will be with the ceramic students while I will stay in Kyoto with the fabric program. We have had a very good response to the ceramic class and I anticipate a full enrollment of 15 students in the whole program this year. The program was a great success in 2001 and the students were very enthusiastic about their total experience. I returned with the group in mid-June to settle all the financial details of the program and to begin work on the new scroll series that I showed in Kyoto at the end of July.

By the end of June I was back in the Kyoto house happily working on the series of ‘soft scrolls’ that had been in the planning stages for some time. The images were taken from photos of my neighborhood, my garden and rooftops (seen from my second floor studio windows) collaged into a vertical scroll format. The fabric I used was a roll of kimono silk in kasuri with a grid woven with a slub weft – ideal for my concept. I had no idea how to accomplish the traditional scroll (kakejiku) mounting but discovered an old friend had studied the technique with a famous Kyoto teacher. She was kind enough to demonstrate the process, share her materials (all of which are very specialized) and introduce me to the tiny shop that has everything one needs for scroll mounting. I was fortunate to meet a graduate student at Kyoto Seika University who helped me with the photo screens and who, with his carpenter experience, made quite perfect work of the bottom rods (jikugi) for the scrolls which had lacquer ends mounted on wooden dowels. The work progressed apace.

In the middle of July I traveled to Okayama to mount a solo show at Tetsuo Kusama’s Gallery 99-01 of the ‘Kyoto Castoffs Scrolls’, a series of works, completed in Athens some months previously, using industrial samples rescued from a Kyoto trash heap. All fabrics were narrow weaves that I turned into verticals, added metal leaf or bead embellishment and mounted on fabric in an ersatz scroll format (completed long before I studied the real technique). The show looked perfect in the high ceiling gallery space. (See a detail of one of the works enclosed.) While there I gave a lecture and workshop at Okayama University where Tetsuo is head of the textile program. Later that month my godson, Andrew Palmer, from our Cranbrook days, came to visit. The summer was very hot so we tried to do our touring of Kyoto early in the day and then he was on his own in the afternoon while I worked in my studio. I have A/C on both floors now so I was quite comfortable. My show of ‘The Shimogamo Scrolls ‘ opened at Gallery Gallery the end of July with old friends and new guests in attendance. We covered the windows and had the low light level my metal leaf works adore.

Shortly after the show opened a young architect friend, Kim Dae-Kyun, arrived from Seoul for a week’s visit. Together we accomplished my long-held dream of climbing Fuji-san! I did not want to make the trip alone and never found a Japanese friend who was willing to make the effort. Dae-Kyun agreed with enthusiasm and devotion. We made all preparations, boarded the Shinkansen for Mishima (which was the wrong station) but, finally boarded a special bus to the 5th Stage and began our climb in overcast weather with a few sprinkles of rain. There is a wide trail most of the route with ropes along the side for support and a constant stream of climbers of all ages greeting you with friendly words and smiles. There are a series of stations for rest and refreshment on the way and we reached the 8th Stage, about 11,000 ft, at dark, having climbed about 5 hours that first day. We bedded down in a huge dorm and tried to rest for the last push in order to arrive at the summit by sunrise (otherwise the climb does not really count). We arose at 1:30 am to a clear sky, full moon and stars beyond number. The horizon below us was a fluff of white clouds that glowed brightly in the moonlight. Above us on the switchback trails the lights of the climbers looked like an army of fireflies. The final climb was a challenge but with frequent stops, an occasional push from Dae-Kyun and a can of oxygen we made it to the top just as the sun was peeking over the craggy 13,000+ ft summit. It was a moment, an experience, and a friendship to treasure forever. Fuji-san inspired the ‘Maku to Moon and Sun’ that cap my many years of life and work in Japan, now on exhibit in Atlanta.

Best Wishes (Belated) to you in the NEW YEAR OF THE HORSE.