new crop of conceptual arists /  by Jim Hathaway

An artist friend of mine spends time on the Internet.  He was telling me about the conceptual artists in London coming along, the girl who steals diamonds from jewelry stores and swallows them and follows their progress thru her guts on YouTube.  And there was a guy that digs up other people's shrubs I think.

Is criticism required?

In a world where people buy guns at Walmarts and shoot children, I fear these new Conceptuals have an up hill battle if they want to shock, or surprise.

Poodle sweat.  Hungry ghosts.

my secret life /  by Jim Hathaway

Here comes the last week of my exhibition.  What happened.

A year of painting, 26 years of splashing ink, and smearing oil paint before that.  I started in New York and now here I am on this little green hill in Yanaka.

How did this happen? How did it happen so fast?

Good times. Bad times. 

This exhibition's bad comes from the days I could not be here.  In New York you put your paintings on the wall for a month and you are in the gallery for the opening.  In Tokyo people expect to see you every day.  Some days I teach.  I missed some old friends, and some new ones.

It is something to sit and look at a years work on the wall. People say this year fits together more than others. Perhaps its because of the frames, a unity of frames, and of scale.  It is not a big place.  Smaller work fits. 

I used more color.  And a much smaller brush.  My favorite brush for the paintings in this show was made out of three thin hairs from the whiskers of a Chinese rat.  It makes a very fine line.

So many times in life, a very fine line.

It starts /  by Jim Hathaway

It starts with and empty space, but this year it started with a title, "My Secret Life". I needed a title for the community art map deadline before I had a concept for my show. So I stole one from a Leonard Cohen song.

What I had was a disordered collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings that I had been working on and a rather disconnected life.


Now it comes together, paintings done andframed, space cleaned and waiting. Titles yet to be come up with. An opening day set at the end of this week.


    Come and see how it all worked out. A mystery that is still unfolding.

Mt. Aso, a caldera /  by Jim Hathaway

I was in Mt. Aso last week and met some very interesting people and learned a new word, "caldera," not to be confused with a volcanic crater.  Mt. Aso's caldera measures 25 km. north to south.  The whole city is inside it.  You look up and see the giant rim everywhere you go.  as Wikipedia tells us caldera are know to host rich mineral deposits, and Mt. Aso certainly does.  They dig it up with bulldozers, a wonderful yellow ore, a pigment, and a vitamin supplement.  It looks like Raw Sienna from Italy, and if you roast it it becomes a strong iron red color. Japanese call the color "bengara." They gave me some to play with, raw and roasted.

There are great hot springs, great water, and remarkably sophisticated food.  I have eaten a lot of hot spring hotel food.  It always looks great, but does not always taste that way, not always fresh.  The meals I had in Mt. Aso were remarkably good.

And a final discovery, on my way out of town I stopped at a little stationary store, wonderful place, bought some ink for my pen. The guy suggested a bamboo pen.  I didn't laugh in his face, but come on.  I have been whittling bamboo pens before he was born.  But then I bought one, 600 yen, what the heck.  It is great, ten times better than I have ever made.  It was made from the bamboo they used to use for the samurai's arrow shafts.  Never doubt a Japanese crafts person.

http://archaic.art.coocan.jp/bamboopen.html

I received an email: 阿蘇の松谷文華堂でアルカイック工房のBAMBOO　PEN　をお買い上げくださいましてありがとうございました。
今後ともよろしくお願いします。

it recommends for now buying the pens from Aso, Matsutani, Bunhana-do.  It is the fine little shop where found them.

BunHana Do

BunHana Do