wood engraving

Artist Spotlight…56th CWAJ Print Show

So once again it is that time of year. Starting on Friday, October 14th and running through the weekend, the College Women’s Association of Japan‘s annual exhibition and sale of modern Japanese hanga is on at the Tokyo American Club. Admission is free and open to everyone and the prints themselves are as varied and well-priced as they always are. Whether you go every year or this is your first time, I recommend that you do not miss this show. It is a chance to view and purchase top quality original art, whether you are looking for a souvenir of time in Japan, are a serious art collector or are simply tired of looking at your bare white walls. I am going to highlight a few pieces from the show in this post, but if you are not familiar with the history of Japanese printmaking I recommend that you read my Hanga 101 primer first.

The cover print shown above, Evening Snow on Mt. Hira, is by master printmaker KUROSAKI Akira (it is a standard device to put the last name first in capital letters), whose print last year was also on my top list and sold out completely. Kurosaki is working on a series called “Eight Views of Omi,” a title reference to the early ukiyo-e series by Ando Hiroshige. I continue to think they are his best prints in years and that by looking backwards, he is actually moving forwards.

Another artist moving forward by looking backward is URATANI Hiroto with his (Face I <Hill Form>). After years of similar looking prints – colored and lined rolling fields – his entry this year builds on those hill forms by creating a face from them while also speaking to earlier 20th century printmakers and even, to my mind, Modigliani.

I am never normally an animal print lover, but the charm and fun of IMAI Yosuke’s Braid has really caught my attention this year. I know you dog aficionados are going to like this one.

And KIM Sohee must have the funniest sense of humor of any of the artists in the show. Her inaugural entry last year made the catalog cover and left everyone smiling. This year’s print is hysterical and inventive again.

For sheer prettiness, I think there is a tie between MATSUSHIMA Junko’s Spring Scent No. 3 and…

…OKAWA Miyuki’s A Life, and A Life over Lives.

Nostalgic Japan prints, while lovely, don’t always push the artistic envelope. This year, NORIKANE Hiroto’s Big Roof-2 (Autumn) is so visually arresting in the way the roof dominates the space that I have to change that opinion.

Traditional CWAJ Print Show rules require submitted prints to be from the current year or one prior. New changes in these rules have allowed invited artists (as opposed to those prints selected by jury) to submit older work. For example, in this NAKAYAMA Tadashi Wind/Girl from 1956, the youthful exuberance not only of the subject, but also of the artist, shines through.

The guaranteed sell out? YAMAMOTO Keisuke’s Kiyomizu Temple covered with snow. If possible, it may even be more beautiful that last year’s print, as well as smaller, with a dusky blue of twilight. Supposably, you cannot see the temple from this angle, so he is working entirely from his memory, not a photo. Make sure to enlarge this one by clicking it. Even the poor quality of the scan cannot hide the incredible quality and detail of his lithography technique.

The winner of best title goes to ZHUANG Man for her Outside Is All Buzzing of Cicadas, as I find the roar of late summer cicadas in Japan to be a romantic sign of our return after the summer, but I have also always admired her moody detailed mezzotints. I believe she was a dentist before she became an artist, so fine detail work comes easily to her. Part of what made me notice her print so strongly this year is that is sits on the page of the catalog right next to…

…my absolute favorite print in the show – YOSHIHARA Eri’s Mark Rothko’s chair. I have had a passion for Rothko’s work since college and am currently having a bit of a Thonet chair obsession. But even if you don’t, it is just such a witty print and the scan doesn’t do it justice. This is Yoshihara’s first year in the show and it reminds me that new artists are what interest me most and leads me to my next topic…

…the Young Printmaker Award. Once again, I must offer up a caveat as I co-chaired this committee with the lovely Akiko Tatsuke, but I am so excited by our winning artist and our returning artist.

HIROSE Risa, with her stunning collage of finely detailed wood engravings supplemented by rose petal ink, was the recipient of this year’s award. The photo of Document-A Taste of Impressions in the catalog is about the size of a postage stamp, and cannot do the 97 x 67cm print justice, even if enlarged here. In addition to her winning print, we have two smaller works for sale including this one shown below, The Time Before Morning is Over (which could also be in contention for best title). To really get a sense of her work and technique, please see Artist Spotlight…Rise Hirose’s Ephemeral Beauties.

Our returning YPA winner from 3 years ago is ISHIZAKI Miku who also has three extraordinary works in the show, printed on her signature handmade washi paper. They are gorgeously textural and warm.

Don’t miss the Associate Show in the downstairs Fred Harris Gallery either, an incredble retrospective of work by HAGIWARA Hideo, spanning some 50 years and including amazing prints from his Mt. Fuji series.

The CWAJ Print Show opens at 11am on Friday, October 14th until 8pm that evening. I’ll be there from opening until about 3pm working as a docent. I’m available to answer questions and give tours. The show continues 11am-6pm on Saturday and again from 11am-5pm on Sunday. There are so many more prints I could mention here, but unfortunately not room for them all. Catalogs are available for sale at the show if you would like to have a record of all the prints.

Interested in working on the Print Show? Join CWAJ and get started. Volunteers are needed for returning day in November and that will give you a chance to actually touch and see the work close up.

Image Credits: All images from the 56th CWAJ Print Show catalogue.

Oct 11, 2011 By tokyojinja in Artist Spotlight 3 Comments Tags: CWAJ Print Show, hanga, wood block prints, wood engraving, Young Printmaker Award

Artist Spotlight…Risa Hirose’s Ephemeral Beauties

God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
J.M. Barrie

Pierre de Ronsard, St. Cecilia, Baron Girod de l’Ain, Septer’d Isle…these are some of the roses that grow both literally and figuratively in Risa Hirose’s garden. The beauty of the flowers is matched by the beauty of their names and Hirose finds her inspiration in them. Rose is also a play on her name and that is often reflected in the titles of her pieces such as in her print Hi rose-essence- shown above. In her second and final year in the Master’s program at Tokyo Zokei Univeristy, Ms. Hirose’s wood engravings have already won numerous competitions and she has held solo exhibitions and been selected for the CWAJ Print Show for the past two years.

Wood engraving is a type of relief printmaking in which an image is cut away, leaving a raised surface on which the ink is applied and then transferred to paper. Traditional wood blocks are carved with the grain of the wood and the prints often display or even feature the grain as a part of the artist’s vision. On the other hand, wood engraving uses wood cut across the grain of the wood – like a slice of tree trunk. The prints tend to be small, as they are limited by the size of the trunk or branch (about 15cm in diameter), as in the example below.

Hirose uses the traditional tsuge (boxwood) for her blocks, which is very hard, very slow-growing and perfect for carving incredibly fine detail. Her small works are often single images in the round, using the shape of the block as the outermost border, such as in Passion ToKei, her first print to be exhibited at the 2009 CWAJ Print Show. Look very closely at the image below – it is not a print – it is actually the carved block used to make the print. Her technical mastery is amazing.

To get the meticulous detail she is known for, Hirose hand prints the blocks onto super fine translucent gampi paper. Thicker paper would not yield such detail. After drying, each one is carefully trimmed and attached with a natural based glue to heavier paper. Here is the artist herself, standing in front of drying gampi paper impressions of one of her newest works Things That Day. This new print is a memory of her trip to Okinawa and adds bougainvillea and coral to her repertoire.

To make a large wood engraving, an artist will align a group of blocks like a parquet floor, one square next to another. This is not the system Hirose uses. She uses (and re-uses) her blocks like modular components, placing them in her compositions. Unlike most traditional wood block prints, where uniformity is prized, each one of hers is different as placement cannot be exact. The large work below, Diary-pale,moisture-, is 110cm x 75cm, an unfeasible size for a regular wood engraving. Her collage-like approach and use of empty space is one of the thing that makes Hirose’s prints unusual.

In another large print, Document 1-one prior fragment-, shown below, you can see some of the components repeated from the print above. You can also see certain images repeated within the print, for example the hyacinth bulb, the small rosebuds and daisies.

Hirose’s artistic themes revolve around the idea of “sealing down time”, yet ironically, the prints themselves contain an impermanent and changeable material. After glueing each small print to the larger paper, she crushes rose petals directly on each piece, creating a wash of soft pigment. The color starts out as a rich purple and fades over time to a champagne-like color. In each step of her work she layers on the small differences giving each print in the edition a unique quality. Below is a close-up of the center of Document 1-one prior fragment- when it was originally created a few months ago.

Here it is faded as it currently appears now. I think it is amazing to watch a normally static art form develop and mature over time.

Risa Hirose will have a print at the upcoming annual exhibition of the Daigaku Hanga Gakkai (Committee of Universities of Art for Print Studies in Japan) held at Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts from December 5-19, 2010, along with other print work by more than 280 students. There will small prints by the students available for sale – some for only 1000yen each.

And her new day job when she graduates this spring? Ms. Hirose will be an engraver at the Japanese Mint. So each time you hold a fresh yen bill, you too can have your own Risa Hirose engraving.

N.B. I am a little frustrated with this post as none of the photos begin to show the elusive quality of her work, or even the absolute excellence of her technique. I guess it is simply a limitation of the medium.

All images copyrighted by Risa Hirose. Please do not re-post without writing to me for permission. Thank you.

Nov 11, 2010 By tokyojinja in Artist Spotlight 2 Comments Tags: CWAJ Print Show, japanese prints, Risa Hirose, roses, wood block prints, wood engraving