A discovery on Swallows: a compact aerodynamic frame was accompanied by the expression of an eagle.
Crazy, sexy, cool. Naming just a few, start from top: Oxalis (Imo Katabami), Spiderwort (Murasaki Tsuyukusa), Meadow Sage / Salvia Guaranitica
Cast of characters, clockwise from top left: Yarrow, Cherry Sage, Can’t Recall, Salvia Guaranitica (flower only), a cuppa java, my best friend Sofi asleep in the phone, Pentax WG3 in micro-macro mode.
Thank you, to the month of June, for all the scents, shades and shapes,
and Thank you! for your visit.
While teaching myself how to use fabric dye, I worked in a office translating mostly medical professionals’ scribbles. I’d carve out five minutes here, ten minutes there, to somehow get my art thing going, until eventually I became the only worker on self-appointed flextime.
On Mondays during lunch I’d walk past several cafes with too many tiny tables, on a cluttered Tokyo street down to a florist, and for a couple hundred yen choose just one flower to place on my desk, a beige-gray rectangle. As an ongoing art education I’d pause between each paragraph for a few moments and closely observe the blossom of the week.
Flower shop flowers always made me a little sad: straight stemmed, sterile, tagged. I eventually parted ways with the scribbles, but what I’ve seen in each flower stayed with me, it’s the remembering of the field somewhere outside their greenhouse, accumulated stories woven into their roots. Years later, they found their way into an enlarged flower petal about to be painted on a dress, on silk with the fabric dye, now my medium of choice.
Despite the art interferences, I fulfilled my responsibilities at the scribble’s. Enough so that few years later the same people invited me back, flextime and all, which was very nice of them, but I had already made other plans, to give my all to the art thing.
The choice smart or otherwise? One thing I know, it was the only one, and I blame it on those flowers with stems too straight, and all the moments I shared with them.
Belles in the bouquets, all picked in the wild, from top, Japanese name in brackets for accuracy sake:
– Bell Flower (Hotaru Bukuro) / Honeysuckle (Suikazura) / Hyacinth Orchid (Siran)
– Hydrangea / Spiderwort (Murasaki Tsuyukusa)
– Dame’s Violet (Hana Daikon) / Yarrow (Nokogiri Sou) / Oxalis (Imo Katabami – the pink in focus. They were “asleep” at the time of photographing, which was immediately after getting picked from under a shrub.) / Cherry Sage (Yakuyou Sarubia – leaves only) / Fennel (leaves)
– Polygonum (Hime Tsurusoba) / Coral Flower (Haze Ran) / Herb Robert (Hime Fuuro)
– Adenophora Gaudi Violet (Sobana) / Gooseneck Loosestrife (Tora no o) / Prunella Vulgaris (Utsubogusa) / Gymnaster Savatieri (Miyako Wasure) / Spiderwort
Been conducting a little dye test between visits to local cherry trees at sundown. Also, spotted a few swallows swishing through the hazy late pm light today, the very first of 2016.
From top:
Then the Big Quiet (descended upon the field) (2014)
Anchored Fishing Boats (2015) – Ibaraki, Japan
Calla Leaves in May (2013)
Takamatsu Port at night (2011) – Kagawa, Japan
Magnolia (2015)
A Trip to Tango (2013) – Kyoto, Japan
All derivatives from Dyed Threads series.
From top:
Spider Lily – early sketch, monochrome (2015)
Wing Diptych 1 (2015) The bird was photographed in September 1999, and became the inspiration for the Wing Dress series.
Spider Lily – study, monochrome (2015)
Wing Diptych 2 (2015)
Wing Diptych 3 (2015) The drawing was of an imaginary wing, and preceded the Wing Dress series.
Dragon Dress Diptych (2015)
Dragon Dress Prototype (2015) The dress in the photo was created around 1999-2000 with fabric marker as the first experiment for the Dyed Threads series.
The actual petal is about 3cm long. Straight-edged at start, it then progressively blossoms into a free style wavy form and tangles with other ones until they become a crazy mass of flaming red. Photographed in early Autumn 2014 as a research for a series of dyed dresses named Spider Lily Red.
All images were photographed with iPhone 4s during the hottest days of summer 2015 at sundown. Grainy textures came, mostly from the lack of light, and a slight bit from editing with vscocam.
