Geidai and the pandemic, the graduate exhibition

The National University of Fine Arts in Ueno, Tokyo Geidai, is the most exclusive art school in Japan. It may be the most competitive of all universities in Japan to enter, and that is saying something. Students study exhaustively and face years of rejection to enter. Once inside they get the stamp, the brand. Brands are important in Japan. You enter a room and for the rest of your life people whisper, "He went to Geidai you know," even if all you do is teach night school in Okinawa.

Geidai kids have distractions. They command good part time jobs at cram school's teaching others to pass the entrance tests. The school festival in early September is a wild drunken weekend that requires months to prepare and time to clean up. Every weekend offers another distraction.

This year's pandemic seemed to have blocked some of that allowing students to focus their attention. 

The graduate exhibition this weekend surpasses anything I have seen in thirty years I have visited.

Black ink, the colors inside

I cleaned my pen on a wet tissue and was surprised by the colors that flowed. It was black ink, pure black, but inside was more. I did chromatography on 3 inks black inks I had on my desk. The results surprised me.

I know every sumi painting ink is a different color black. but I didn’t suspect so many colors from fountain pen ink, as it is rarely diluted.

I decided to try chromatography on sumi ink made for painting and calligraphy. Here is some ink from some of the ink sticks I use regularly. There are both Japanese and Chinese, black ink. Traditional ink. I was surprised by the difference.

Happy New Year

Well may the world go this year

Christmas ink

I stole this idea from my mother. She used to draw with a flair pen, which can make an antiseptic line, but she would go back at it with a little water on a brush and move around some of the ink around. With fountain pen in you can pretty much melt the line away.

Family and friends that have passed are missed and remembered at Christmas.

Two watercolors by my mother -

by M. C. Hathaway

A watercolor done by my mother, on one of the rare occasions she took her paints and escaped into the woods hoping not to be pursued by us wild animals, some 60 years ago.

The climbing tree

Two of the three sisters in this have reached their age of retirement at the present time.

Another show gone

This year’s exhibition was memorable in that it didn't exist. Thanks to the pandemic it was virtual, living here on line.

What to do when a show comes down? I have memories of Tori no ichi, the big Kumade festival I visit in Asakusa in November on the rooster days, tenth sign in the zodiac. This year there are only two rooster days, November 2nd, tomorrow and the 26th.

If you visit a Rooster shrine on the rooster day, or better, in the evening the crowds are tremendous as are the lights, as are the displays of kumade for sale, decorated rakes, to symbolically rake the money in the coming year.

My poet friend Sagae Ko contended it was the first event of the new year in Tokyo. He based one of our exhibitions on the premise, visiting different spots in town with our paintings and poems.

At first what impresses is of course the lights, crowds, the hundred food stalls that line the pilgrims way. What impressed me more deeply was visiting on a non-rooster day. The great warren of decorations, food, and toys were gone? All I found were parking lots. Was I in the right place? How could all that life and fun be gone?

Kumade hanging, Torinoichi

"Wise men fish here"

On my Facebook page today I asked if a person goes to an art museum of answers or for questions. I suspect the wise look for questions. I find reflections, reflections of what I’m thinking, even if I don’t know I’m thinking it.

Today it was the roughest and most simple inks that got me.

First was a scroll by a tea master, Fujimura Yoken, in the tea section. The base of his painting much more than his calligraphy which seem to be made by a whole other person. I wonder, words or image which tells a better story?

The second was an ink by the hermit priest Ryokan.