What's So Japan About It? Part 2

During the month of May, in conjunction with Cullom Gallery's current exhibit, East by West (highlighting work by eleven different artists who draw on technical and aesthetic traditions of Japanese art on or of paper) participating artists are invited to comment on the question, What's so Japan about it?" as the question relates to their own work.  In the second installment of the series, Northampton, MA artist, Annie Bissett talks about her embrace of the technical properties of Japanese woodblock printmaking, and her departure from their historic content.  B.C.


This thing I do, moku hanga, is very Japanese. The term moku hanga is Japanese for woodblock print -- moku means wood and hanga means print. Woodblock printing was brought to Japan in the 8th century by Buddhists from China and was first used to reproduce religious texts. After a time colors began to be added by hand and then, as woodblock printing became the primary form of commercial printing in Japan, printers began to carve blocks for each color. Japanese woodblock prints, also called ukiyo-e, are known especially for their intense use of color and for the fact that the pigments are water-based rather than oil-based. Although admittedly I am a Japanophile, I didn’t start working with moku hanga because I wanted to do Japanese art. I learned moku hanga because I was trying to find an artistic medium that would suit my way of working, that was neither toxic nor messy, and that would be easy and compact enough to do on the side in my small home-based studio while I continued to serve my freelance digital commercial illustration clients. If you’ve ever seen a genuine Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print, you know that the Japanese brought this art form to unimaginable heights of perfection. Because of this, working with the Japanese method of waterbased woodblock printing can be a difficult burden to bear. Not many of us 21st century western artists could hope to achieve the degree of perfection attained by the great 17th and 18th century ukiyo-e masters, nor do we need to try. Unfortunately, though, that type of work is what many people think of when you say "Japanese woodblock," so that's often the silent standard in their minds. I try to avoid this association by saying “woodcut,” “moku hanga” or even “woodprint,” a term I'm growing fond of.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892)  The night is still... From 100 Aspects of the Moon.  Date: 1888

Like many moku hanga beginners, my first few prints were Japanese-y. I did a triptych of the Kamakura Buddha statue and a few tai chi figures. But after a year or so I began to find my voice. I realized that I could take liberties with the tradition, and the technique became a vehicle for the subject matter I was interested in. I'm an artist who is topic-oriented rather than process-oriented, so all my ways of working are in service to the idea behind the print. I make moku hanga maps from views of the earth I find on Google Earth, I imitate western printmakers when referencing western historical material, I do whatever I need to do to bring my idea to life using moku hanga.

Annie Bissett.  Borders #1: U.S. Mexico. Date: 2008.  14 x 22 inches

I'm often conscious of the Japanese-ness of the method as I work, however. How can you do a bokashi (color blend technique) and not compare yourself to the ukiyo-e masters? Making a bokashi connects you to Japan. Using washi connects you to Japan. The carving tools, the brushes, the process itself are very Japanese in their simplicity, their beauty, their form. I don't mind that. I love it, in fact, because I love Japan. Yet I find that I am able to make very American art using this very Japanese art form. That paradox is somehow part of the work and is often amusing to me. One print I made in my recent "Pilgrims" series needed to show two Pilgrims as an American Adam and Eve, and I wanted to show them making love. I couldn't resist referencing Utamaro's beautiful shunga (erotica) work, so I copied one of his poses and I think the little inside joke worked well.

Annie Bissett.  American Bible Story.  2009.  11-5/8 x 13-5/8 inches.  Japanese woodblock print.

As an artist, the work I want to make is about my life, my country, my world, my worries, my cares and concerns. If I could paint I would do it with paint, but I can't paint. The transparent color overlays inherent in the moku hanga method somehow make sense to me after a long career as a commercial artist, so that's how I've chosen to express myself. I try to take the support of the beauty and elegance and history of the method without letting go of my own voice and identity.

The Washington Project - Update, Day 8

Since touring and sketching locations throughout Washington State during April 2011, artists Eva Pietzcker has returned home to Berlin and is busy carving woodblocks for a number of views.  She tells me that Soda Spring and Steamboat Rock are in process.  Things got busy in Seattle at the same time, and I've been aware that the last chapter of Eva's tour with C.G. booster, Joe Kaftan, was missing from the story, sorry Joe.  Now that I'm on vacation for a week, I finally have time to catch up on some of these things.  So here it is, Day 8 of The Washington Project in Joe's words.  More to come, no doubt.  B.C.

Day 8
We rose in Forks, WA and went straight to the nearest dinner, per Eva's request.  Over hash browns and coffee, we talked about similar childhoods, and how for both of us, creativity, the value of new experiences, and even Star Trek were all emphasized in our up bringing. Eva said she was taught that art was sacred - a belief that still completely impacts her life. She wondered if the creative life, by definition, is one of openness and exploration.

Our fist stop was First Beach in La Push. I mentioned that I was immediately taken by the scene of the village with huge sea stack islands just off shore.  'Why do you like this view?' Eva asked.  'I love places where you can see peoples' first attempts to connect with the landscape, like this village on the edge of the country, and old barns, or decrepit docks and wooden bridges in the country.'  Eva said, 'For me, there is so much evidence of humans here. I prefer what is wild, and fresh. Working with the untouched landscape, I want to relate this to these areas in us, that are maybe fundamentally good in themselves, or at least untouched.'  Eva smiled at me looking at the sea stacks and the ocean and said 'So could we go have a look at second beach, next?'

As soon as we arrived at second beach, Eva quickly moved toward a muscle encrusted boulder that lay in the path of a low stream, took a seat, and dove into a sketch. She was in front of a broad sea stack island, that was just off shore. Pacific rollers crashed around the island, and seagulls glided off to the side of the rock edges, just above the surf. This was the sunniest and brightest I had ever seen the Washington coast.

After pleasant lunch in Forks, we drove south and then east along the Hoe River toward the Hoe Rain Forrest.  About 10 miles up the road, Eva very excitedly said, 'Stop the car, stop the car! I know we are going to see rain forrest, but the river is like none I've ever seen!  With these enormous logs, bigger than I thought possible, I must have a look'. I obliged and watched her do her survey dance, until she settled on the pebbled bank of the river. She was posed in front of a tree trunk that was 150 feet long. The river basin was flat, wide and mostly made up of rounded gravel, with the sinewy streams cutting in and out between massive logs and fallen trees. A birch tree grove was beyond the river with pines behind them, leading back to snow covered mountains. It was an awesome scene. After returning from an long exploration climb on downed logs, I noticed Eva was no longer working, but was aggressively throwing rocks into the river. I waved her toward the car, and waited for her there. After a while, she approached, and said. 'I am done making art. It takes a lot out of me, and I can't give anymore'.  'Forever?' I said with a smile. 'Yes,' she responded,  'You broke me, you took me to too many places, now I'm broken.' I apologized and asked if we still might have a look at the Hoe Rain Forrest.  'If you insist.' she said with a fake grimace.
As we drove, she said. 'You know there are painters who paint 8 hours a day, but for me I have to hold all the plates in my mind, and I have to create something that is challenging and interesting, because this is only the beginning of the process, as I will cut and print for around 3 weeks for each sketch. And then it is very important that I am never repeating myself, because that is boring, so I really have to concentrate, and all that concentration can hurt, or at very least be very exhausting.'

When we arrived at the Hoe Rain Forrest, Eva perked up at the sight of the long drapes of moss hanging from the Spruce branches. We walked to the Hall of Mosses. We found ourselves standing next to a large beautiful owl, that was hiding on a lower branch. We continued into the great hall, and were surrounded by the layers of back-lit yellow moss, looking like so many golden tapestry. We were both quieted by the sight, and just slowly turned in circles, looking up, looking down taking in the illuminated richness of this wholly unique wonder forest. I didn't know their were so many shades of green in the world.
I whispered to Eva, 'If ferries exist, they definitely live here.' After a moment, I asked Eva if she was in the spirit to sketch here. She paused and said, 'Perhaps not. This is more of an etchers setting, so many lines in these trees, thousands and thousands of lines. This is magical, but it is not for my sketch pad I think.'  With that she turned back on the path toward the entrance  and said, 'Beside I am pretty sure we are on vacation now.'  So we left the forest and headed to the coast for a nice walk on the beach.

What's So Japan About It?

During the month of May, in conjunction with Cullom Gallery's current exhibit, East by West (highlighting work by eleven different artists who draw on technical and aesthetic traditions of Japanese art on or of paper) participating artists are invited to comment on the question, What's so Japan about it?" as it relates to their own work.  In the first response, Kansas City artist, Saskia Lehnert, shares her nexus of ukiyo-e, gender identity, and looking at Japanese culture from the outside in.  B.C.

Saskia Lehnert. Looking into the Sun: The Appearance of the Artist Imagining Herself as a Japanese Warrior in a Kurosawa Film. Japanese woodblock print. 22 x 15 inches.

The piece in question is a self-portrait entitled, “Looking into the Sun: The Appearance of the Artist Imagining Herself as a Japanese Warrior in a Kurosawa Film.” The image used to create this woodblock print comes from a photograph, distilled through a line screen pattern in photoshop, carved with a dremel tool in woodblock, and printed in the traditional Japanese style, known as moku hanga. This print was originally conceived as a kite print, and in fact an artist's proof from the edition was mounted and exhibited as a kite in Japan. The subject and title of the print contains many ukiyo-e references, and was originally inspired by traditional Japanese kite prints of the Edo period (1603-1868): namely the 'big head' kites such as the Daruma kites and those depicting close-up, enlarged head shots of famous actors of the day or great warriors from Japanese history. During that time period in Japan, the government under the Tokugawa Shogunate kept tight control on every aspect of people's lives, and everyone was expected to keep to a very specific place and role in society. As John Stevenson notes in the book, “Japanese Kite Prints”, during the seventeenth century, “kite-flying itself could be a mild form of rebellion against a strictly stratified hierarchy. Commoners loved to fly kites over the compounds of noble families in Edo: though not specifically forbidden, this was considered a way of thumbing the nose at social superiors.” Indeed, it was this very idea that provided the main inspiration for this print: the power of flying symbolically through the sky over the heads of society below. I decided that the 'big head' in my version of a kite print needed to be mine. Not that my ego is currently so enlarged as to need to fly above everyone else, but I felt that a bit of self-empowerment through art- making would certainly be in order for my own personal time and place in the world today.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) “Mutsuki (the New Year's Festival)”. From the series, Five Festivals (Go sekku no uchi) c. 1845

The title of my print gives a nod to Yoshitoshi's famous print series, "32 Aspects of Customs and Manners (32 Aspects of Women)," produced at the end of the nineteenth century. These prints, with titles such as, “Looking sleepy: the appearance of a courtesan of the Meiji era”, or “Looking weighted-down: the appearance of a waitress at Fukagawa in the Tempo era”, depict women from various time periods in Japanese history caught in every-day moments of their lives. I adopted the naming conventions of these titles to draw a comparison between Yoshitoshi's depiction of women and my own contemporary depiction of my female self outside the Japanese tradition. Although Yoshitoshi shows a sensitivity to the women he depicts, which in my mind exceeds many of his ukiyo-e predecessors, I still hope to highlight the difference in the way his women 'look' and the way I 'look' as both the subject and the artist of this print.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) “Looking relaxed: the appearance of a Kyoto geisha of the Kansei era” (1789-1801). From the series: Thirty-two Aspects of Women published by Tsunashima Kamekichi, 1888

Yet not only have I muddied the gender role in this reference by 'imaging myself' into a heroic Japanese male role, unlike Yoshitoshi, it is not a role from a specific time and place in Japanese history that I take my inspiration from, but more, from my rather removed impressions of Japanese history as gathered from the movies and cultural artifacts exported from Japan, like what I absorb from watching a Kurosawa samurai film. More layers, more degrees of separation, but perhaps instead of being a romanticizing, exoticizing force, I can turn that distance into an advantage and not a disadvantage.

from Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film, The Seven Samurai

Additionally, by using myself as the subject of the print, and then imagining myself into a typical ukiyo-e subject, it gave me a chance to examine more closely my unique connection to the ukiyo-e tradition, and the ways in which it and the larger picture of Japanese artistic and aesthetic concerns inform my own work. It became a means to highlight the contradiction of a Western, American, woman artist in the twenty-first century with minimal real-life connection to modern Japan working in the tradition of Japanese woodblock prints. Also, it was a way to find the resolutions inherent in that contradiction. And so, there I am, looking heroic, looking fierce like a traditional samurai warrior. I am looking into the (Rising) Sun, both literally and symbolically; it's nebulous, it's slightly blinding, it's hard to describe what I see, but I'm still seeking to find that insight, perhaps an insight that only an outsider can bring, that only an outsider can take away. After all, the technique, content, and inspiration used in my prints exists just as much outside the ukiyo-e tradition as in it; It's quite an interesting hybrid indeed.

Add Your Voice - Free Ai Weiwei

Please join me in signing this online petition calling for the release of Ai Weiwei.  If you are unfamiliar with the events of Weiwei's recent detention, here is a description courtesy of change.org. "On April 3, internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound. Ai’s whereabouts remain unknown and due process under Chinese law has been denied him.   We members of the international arts community express our concern for Ai’s freedom and disappointment in China’s reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity...."

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

The Washington Project - Days 6 & 7

(A series of posts from Cullom Gallery booster, and avid Northwest outdoors man, Joe Kaftan, who is escorting Eva Pietzcker on the next leg of her sketching trip for the Washington Project.)

Day 6

After a ferry from Edmonds to Kingston, we had lunch in Anacortes, then drove the few miles to the coast to Salt Creek Park at Crescent Beach. The tide was at a two-month low and the creek was barely wet. The beach was expansive, and stretched beyond the small island in the bay. I had never seen that before. We walked over jagged rocks that are usually under water to the line where sand and gravel begin.  I pointed out geoduck and horse clam holes.  On the sand we inspected the manila clam siphons. Eva walked back and forth in front of the stranded island, pausing and looking. She said she would like to work here.  She sat down on the clear sand, and got right to work.  I nodded off then woke up to Eva exclaiming that the tide was taking our beach back. We jumped up, I grabbed the gear while Eva stood in the rising surf, and finished her composition.  She looked over at me holding the blanket and bag, and said, "This is exciting, we almost got caught!"

In the late afternoon we drove around Crescent Lake.  Cars passed as Eva looked over the road edge and through the trees, waiting to feel the right spot. She spoke about the importance of finding beauty in a scene, but the need to not grab at the most obvious compositions. "That's the job of a postcard" she said. About a mile before The Lake Crescent Lodge, on Hwy. 10 1 west, Eva said, here. The spot was on a hairpin turn with no shoulder or guardrail to keep us from driving into the lake. So we went to the next pullout, turned around.  I stopped and Eva jumped out and flung herself over the guard rail, with gear, onto the wooded lake edge. She worked for some time, and I drove by every 10 minutes to check.  When Eva jumped back in the car, she was delighted. She said she had found a classic composition, but one that was subtlety compelling.

Salt Creek, Olympic Peninsula, WA

Day 7
Woke up at a lodge in the mountains then quickly headed for the northwest corner of the state - Cape Flattery.  On the way, we talked about why I am excited for Eva to experience this part of the country.  I told her that I am drawn in particular to places where land meets water, and this state has so much of that, and it comes in such surprising and stunning forms.  For me, Eva's work gets to the essence of the beauty of an outdoor scene.  When I look at her work, I realize I may not have ever seen the place she is representing, but I have felt it many times. 

We arrived at Cape Flattery and scouted out the 5 or 6 view decks.  Eva stood at each looking, moved around, sat down at different parts of each deck.  At the farthest point, she declared that this was a stunning view: a large island and several small cliffy islands in close, and dramatic bonsai-like trees growing from the rocks in front of us.  But after a long look she could not make a composition that included all these elements, so we kept looking.

She moved to the only deck that faced north, and started painting a series of branches in front of rocks in the water that were surrounded by swirling bull kelp. Curved cliff faces rose behind the rocks, looking like so many ship bows in a line. Eva worked quietly as one group of hikers after another stopped to take in the view, and to peek at what she was working on. As time passed, it became colder and windier. At one point Eva said, "this is too big, too much to look at, I need a second sheet."  She asked me to hold her pad, as it fluttered in the wind, and she placed a fencing sheet above it and made markings to show were each element of the composition crossed from the original page to the new one. Then she secured to old sheet in her canister, and the new one to her black board. She worked in the chill a good time more, and then wrapped up her work, saying, "maybe it was too much, you could work all week on such a view."
 

We paused for a break on our walk out and I noticed Eva was sitting in the sun on the edge of a cliff, facing the slender rock islands just to the south of the point.  I realized she had already begun another sketch.  When she finished she sat next to me on a log and said, "You see, I need to come to a place, walk around it, maybe nap a little in it, breath it in, be with it, then I start to know if there is a composition there for me."

Back in the car we drove through Neah Bay passing Hobuck Beach to stop at Shi Shi Beach.  This would be a new place for both of us.  An hour-long walk through gnarled woods, over miles of muddy puddles, a few hundred yards down switch backs, and we slipped out of the thick woods onto a bright sandy beach. Immediately we noticed several house-sized sea stacks just to the north, but what caught our eye was a skyline-like set of sea stacks a mile or two away on the south end of the beach. The waves were crashing, the sun was sparkling on the water, and we both lay in the sand and relaxed, enjoying our arrival at this gorgeous place. We discussed how low the sun could get before we would need to turn back into the woods. We wanted to walk to the southern stacks, but that wasn't possible. Instead Eva zig zagged the beach we were on and settled in front of a huge weathered log and worked until the sun hit its mark.  Eva wrapped up her work, and we ascended to the jungle, lumbering through the puddles back to the car. It was fine ending to a full and exhausting day.

Eva Pietzcker at Cape Flattery, WA

Shi Shi Beach, WA

Eva Pietzcker, Shi Shi Beach, WA at sunset

The Washington Project - Days 4 & 5

Day 4

Tuesday was spent getting back to Seattle for an evening event at the gallery -a show and tell of Eva's sketches from Eastern Washington, completed prints from her 2010 summer trip to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands, and a chance to share ideas forming around this project.  Eva and I received a lot of good feedback from our audience, specifically that revealing the process of making this series of prints is in fact, interesting.  So that was good, a hunch confirmed.  Some questioned whether the political boundaries of Washington State were too come-lately and arbitrary when dealing with landscapes that were shaped over vast geologic time and by natural cataclysmic events, like the Missoula Floods.  Maybe it's about the Northwest in broader terms, and about commonalities and differences shaped by these natural events.  Others suggested that we expand the project: more artists, and more documentation, maybe a documentary?  All this makes my head spin.  It's exciting to imagine a much bigger scope, but how to grow the project and get the work done that this would require?  A huge thank you to everyone who has participated, in person and in blog comments, in this first stage of The Washington Project.  Everyone of you is part of the process.  Your comments and feedback have been so valuable.

Watching some video clips

Eva shows sketches of Eastern Washington

Day 5
Eva was scheduled to leave for the Olympic Peninsula, but gallery friend, Joe Kaftan called late on Day 4 to say that he was in bed, sick with a recurring bout of strep throat! We regrouped and #1 Gallery Volunteer, Mark Minerich offered to escort Eva to Paradise, at the foot of Mt. Rainer for the day. Another huge thank you to Mark, who kept the project going (and provided Eva with wool and rubber to keep the deep chill away as she sat sketching on 19 feet of snow. Based on the sketch I saw this morning, there is no question that Eva's handling of an iconic location is in no danger of looking cliche. I can not wait for this print. It is going to be really something.

Eva Pietzcker at Paradise, Mt. Rainier, WA

Sketching Mt. Rainer in clouds - a quintessential view

The Washington Project - Day Three

Day Three
12:04 pm, Soda Spring, just east of Rimrock Lake and at the southern foot of Goose Egg Mountain. There is a throng of sound from the frogs’ chorus; of course not one is visible. The winter cattails are silver beige in the middle of the spring, amazing clear water reflecting everything. This is the B-side of the view from Reflection Lake, a view we will probably not see. This makes me think about one of the main questions of this series: if and when to look at iconic views. Our sense of the landscape of Washington is replete with our pride of these views. What to do with them? They are really undeniably commanding of our attention. It seems stupid to ignore them, the way a teenager’s affected disregard is for something that is so clearly amazing. Do we go to Paradise, to Chinook Pass, to the Columbia Gorge? (I already know we will do this today.) [P.S. 7:15 pm and no, we will not make it to the Gorge; keep reading.] and where on the Gorge? Do we look for the ‘most Washington’ Washington? Yes, we will do some of this probably, though it's a walk on a tight rope of potential clichés. So far though, we are going to places like Little Soap Lake and Soda Spring. There is an essential Washington in these places too. And interestingly, Eva is not always aware of what in the landscape is the essential Washington, rather it all seems essential to her. How much of my native sense of the State do I divulge? Is that helpful information?

Before Eva decided that we would stop and sketch here, we talked about lodgepole and Ponderosa pines vs. Douglas fir trees. Why one grows largely on one side of the state, the other on the other side - and the dividing line you could almost walk at the top of the passes. As a kid of the West Side, I know the Doug firs too well. The pines seemed like Martian trees on the rare visits we made to the tinder-dry side of the state. After two days of wide spaces and big rock, today, I was looking to show Eva the transitional places between the basalt and shrub-steepe and the forest. I didn’t think we’d find it at a marshy spring.

It is now 1:10 pm. Soda Spring looks like a sheet of mica you peel with your fingernail. The clouds are quintessential cotton puffs against a cornflower blue sky. The breeze that has not stopped since we arrived is blowing the 5-inch pine needles on this stand then this one. This feels like an iconic view. I don’t think it's the wrong thing to train a gaze upon. Reminds me of a conversation I listened in on last month between Deborah Paine (Curator, Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs) and Seattle art critic, Suzanne Beal, as they traded opinions about the existence of a Northwest aesthetic. Suzanne said undeniably there is one. Deborah wasn’t so sure. Suzanne sited instances of artists who had focused on various subjects prior to relocating to the Northwest, and who after a few years here, began to all incorporate the land somehow into their work. Is this self-important talk? Do all artists who live in a particular location train their eyes on the land around them? How does the location affect the art? What is Eva – German born, living in Berlin – seeing here? Will she, as I hope she will, show us a new vision of our state, or is that too much to ask of someone only beginning to look. Or do the first impressions give us something that cuts to the essence?

2:08, still Soda Spring. Sun changed to cold and clouds and it just snowed briefly. Eva is still sketching. Now the sun is back full. I am listening to Glen Gould in the car, clearly not made of the same metal as Eva. It is so cold outside that the pavement, which has absorbed some small amount of energy from the bright sun, is sending up head ripples, when it meets the 30 -something degree air. Never have seen this.

6:50 pm, Hause Creek Campground. The Japanese phrase, “it was all Yaji and Kita” was true for Eva and me this afternoon, again. We busted it up to this spot, late in the day after naps for both of us at Tieton, got turned around leaving Tieton (I know. How do you get turned around in Tieton?) then after not quite remembering the place we’d scouted out this morning, finally found our way here. The late afternoon/early evening light looked so different that we spent 45 minutes stumbling around with our heads pointed up, looking for The Pine Tree from this morning. Eva is now lying on her back, her sketching board raised over her chest. The sun is going down and she has many, many pine needles to figure out. The creek is saying its never-ending prayer. Otherwise it is very still. Reminds me of childhood days camping. The end of the day, the smell of dinner cooking and the promise of its warmth, and the promise of more warmth when we crawled into sleeping bags in the dark, to listen to the murmur of our parents voices barely audible over the texture of the creek, and then to fall asleep to inner visions of the majesty of the land we had witnessed.

7:15 pm. Eva just got up, thinks it won’t work. I ask if she can still try. This will be the last sketch of this leg of the Project. Maybe it will bomb and she will have spent some serious energy, mental and muscular on a failure. But maybe it will be a new design, an unusual iconic tree. I hope she can go for it and not be steamed at me for asking her to keep going. This will be touch and go. Another hour I’d say at least. She may be really mad and exhausted at the end.

Six minutes later, 7:21. Eva says, “I stop.” No more video clips, no questions from me. I think we are going. Yes, we’re going.

Soda Spring, WA

Eva Pietzcker at Soda Spring, WA

Eva preparing  to sketch The Pine Tree

The Pine Tree (that was not to be), Hause Creek, WA