Kamikoya is also a Bed & Breakfast, with lunch and dinner available if requested. With few other options and the nearest store several kilometres away, I chose the food-included plan. For three days, I was treated to Chikako Uitenboogaart’s cooking. Chikako specializes in spring greens and organic vegetables from her own garden and or picked from the wild. Each meal was a surprise and a beauty for both eyes and stomach. Yohei Uitenboogaart is the manager, looking after finances, the website, driving visitors to and from Kamikoya and all the other details that never quite get written down in a […]

The prospect of a solo exhibition in May completely changed the focus of my art making from a research mode to a production mode. I knew that I wanted to show work using paper and that I was considering presenting one of my poems translated into Japanese and cast in paper. In early March, I went to Hanno, a small town approximately one hour north west of Tokyo to visit the paper making studio of sculptor, Yanai Tsuguo. http://www.yaezakidokudami.com/yanai.html  Realizing that it was going to be difficult to find cotton fibres, my customary fibre of choice for casting and after […]

There have been so many unexpected, special encounters with people here, leading me from one person to the next and from one surprising discovery to another. “Ichi-go ichi-e,” I can’t remember if it was Yohei or Chikako at Kamikoya who first mentioned this age-old saying from Zen Buddhism and the tea ceremony to me. Translated, it means,  this chance meeting of a lifetime – a moment to be treasured and taken advantage of, because it may never happen again. Most of what I know about papermaking I’ve learned through  trial and error, reading and a weekend course in paper casting […]

I flew from Tokyo’s Haneda airport to Kochi, heading to Kamikoya, where I had scheduled a three-day private course in Japanese papermaking. I had decided to spend one night in Kochi in order to visit the Ino Paper Museum. To get to Ino, a small town on the outskirts of Kochi, I took what looked like a tram car straight out of the 1950’s – a startling contrast to Tokyo, where nothing seems to be more than 10 years old! The ride takes about 30 minutes and you get off at the last stop, walk to the end of the […]

For several years now, as part of my artmaking process, I have been spinning dictionary papers into threads. One of the traditional Japanese crafts that I wanted to learn while in Tokyo was shifu- turning paper into thread. This is definitely an art that has almost disappeared in Japan and presently, shifu is practiced by few. Historically, fibres such as hemp, flax and ramie were used for weaving everyday clothes; there were no sheep for making wool, cotton was not a indigenous plant and silk was reserved for the upper class and nobility. In areas were there were not enough […]

I’ve gotten quite far behind with my news in this blog. Over a month ago now, quite out of the blue, I was offered an exhibition in a brand new gallery (still under construction in fact). The proposal came as a result of a presentation of my work that I gave at the gallery Higure, at the invitation of Masashi Ogura. Ogura-san is a curator and visits Montreal almost every summer.  Nicole Gingras suggested we contact each other. Even though I had no work here with me and I had no idea what I would show, this was an offer […]

There are two common subjects in Canadian and Japanese everyday conversation: the weather and I’m Sorry. Sumimasen is the word I hear the most and probably the one I use the most here in Japan. Anything about the weather is a close second. I’m sorry that the weather has been so terrible back at home and the snow just doesn’t know that it has truly worn out its welcome, but here it is spring full-on! Cherry blossom time. The week when everyone here goes slightly pastel crazed and the cameras (including mine) just don’t stop and no one is sorry […]

If you mix up left and right like I often do, being confused about which way to go is a normal state of functioning. Here, everything is definitely mirror image to movement at home. Simple advice to avoid collisions – walk on the left side and before crossing the street, look to the right for oncoming traffic. But before even putting one foot outside this apartment building, I have to take several minutes on Google maps, just to figure out where I am going and how I will get there. Now, close to 3 months later, it is taking less […]

When I applied to come to Japan, I realized that given my interest in text and the beginnings of writing, it would be wise to understand a bit more about Japanese writing. Sometime last winter, I started studying calligraphy in Mikiko Simard’s weekly classes at the Canadian Japanese Cultural Centre in Montreal. Once I knew and shared with her the fact that I would be in Tokyo for six months, she encouraged me to send a work to this exhibition. I practiced and practiced writing the Kanji character for courage. It is above me, just slightly to the right. Two […]

Moon Three already! Monday in Japanese is moon day (getsu-yobi) and months are moons, January being month one, February, month two, etc. I forgot that Monday means moon’s day for the Moon Goddess and Tuesday, is named after the Norse god, Tyr.  The english word month comes from a combination of roots all leading to the moon as the measure of time. March always seems to be a time for confusion – the weather is unpredictable and the rising sap of spring adds craziness to the mixture.  In Tokyo, I live a lot in mystery, simply because I have little […]