Japanese Purse Workshop

I am designing a Japanese purse making workshop for Serentripity Learning Vacations that will be conducted at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and at the residence of Yoshi of Yoshi's Restaurants/Jazz Clubs. I will be conducting these workshop once in September, November and December.

The hour long workshops focus on the reuse themes in Japanese textiles such as boro (work clothes made of stitched together scraps) and sashiko stitching. The base of the purse is a recycled plastic sushi tray. The embellishments reflect a blend of contemporary Japan with the creative thriftiness of Meji era Japan: plastic sushi grass stitched alongside mini shoyu bottles, pearls, and Japanese Delica beads. Regarding the base fabric, we will use recycled Filipino noodle bags (thank you Anne Marie!) overlayed with organza silks. This use of recycle fabrics and materials is a theme common in my work as I am greatly inspired by the Japanese Hawaiian Plantation culture of my father's family.


















I have also created several manga "kawaii" characters that participants can iron onto the fabric of their purses. Contemporary Japanese manga and the recent "Kawaii" graphic style movement have roots in Japan's reaction and exposure to U.S. culture during its occupation after WWII. A great reference book about this period of transformatio in Japan is Embracing Defeat. I found this book fascinating because for me it pinpointed some of the sources of divergence in culture and perspective between Japanese Hawaiians and Japanese in Japan.

Below are these iron-on characters. They are decorated with fragments of vintage Chinese and Japanese food wrappers. I created them in Photoshop and used bits of wrappers I scanned from my collection.















































Below: A butterfly iron-on image created from my Asian food wrapper collection:



















I have created a prototype purse. The cord slider is a mini shoyu bottle (in the shape of a pig). The thick red cording my father picked up for me a few years ago in China.























This purse below has the image of a kiri leaf which is of historical importance. It is a bombing leaflet that the U.S. forces dropped on the Aleutian Islands when the Japanese occupied them during WWII. It alludes to the early falling of Kiri leaves which is a bad omen in Japan. These leaf leaflets warn the Japanese soldiers that their efforts are futile. It also was ironic imagery as there are no trees of mention on these sparsely vegetated islands. I included this image on my purse as the end of The War led to the absorption things Western in occupied Japan. It lead to modern Japan's embrace and zeal for all that is new and marked it's separation from Japanese in diaspora who clung to the thrify Meji Era ways. This purse mixes these two directions.























Detail: Sushi grass and mini fish shoyu bottle embellishment. The shoyu bottle is stuffed with pink produce netting to give it color.

Neuron Kimono Completed

I completed the Neuron Kimono yesterday and had it photographed professionally today. My photographer for my sculptures is George Young in Palo Alto. I am so lucky to be able to document my work with such a great photographer. I love how he lights my sculptures and having my work photographed professional always feels like the last step in completing a piece for me. Now I am ready to prepare it for shipping out to L'Attitude Gallery.

I will be creating the box to ship the piece in this week. I need to construct the boxes for shipping as well as create assembly instructions; the piece breaks apart in half and the large blue neuron elements are snapped on with clothing snaps. The final dimensions of the piece are 3'11" wide x 5'8" tall (including pole) x 3.5" deep. Media: magnet wire, silk, waste canvas, Japanese and Chinese food wrappers, Japanese manga comics, kozo paper, plastic sushi grass, plastic sushi garnish flowers, pearls, costume jewelery, and produce netting. I try to use as much recycled materials as possible.

I am much happier with the wire twisting on this piece than on my past works. In the past I have used manual electrician wire twisters to twist my long lengths of wire. For this piece, I used a drill to twist the wire and it looks so much more consistent. This was suggested to me by an art critique group I am in. I cannot emphasis enough how beneficial it is to be in a critique group. It really has helped me focus on pushing my art to a more refined construction.

Photo by George R. Young























Detail image:

Building kimono

These past few days I have been trying to complete this piece. Kind of busy, though, with the Fourth of July weekend. Here are some pictures of the progress. I completed the green wrapper edging and some of the smaller neuron elements. To create the neuron elements I designed the outline in Illustrator and printed out templates in two different sizes. I used the smaller sized template for the sleeves and the larger template for the middle section.

Making neurons: I twisted the wire with a drill and then shaped it to the template. After the wire forms were completed, I gave each neuron a skin of Chan Pui Mui wrappers attaching with the PVA bookmaker glue. The larger neurons were also covered with kozo paper and manga. After they dried. I placed them on plastic bags outside and glazed them with a UV resistant coating (Golden Polymer Varnish with UVLS)
















Once the glaze dried I added some orange silk to the middle of each neuron (I used YES glue). This is the sort of nucleolus. My children have been curious about these funny forms and it has given me the opportunity to talk to them about cells. My almost four year old scurried off with one neuron to play with, but I got it back in good form.




















Sheer blue silk, courtesy of Colleen Quen couture, covers the large neurons. YES glue used here. Kind of nice to use glue after so much stitching with the waste canvas layer and then the orange raw silk layer.




















Here is the kimono as of this afternoon. This evening I completed papering the large neurons and decided to add blue produce netting to some areas of the sleeves to add more weigh to them. The floor was such a mess. Bits of fabric and food wrappers everywhere. I vacuumed the room a bit just so that bits of scraps don't attach to the elements I make tomorrow. I'll be making large yellow neurons, perhaps three. I hope to complete this by Tuesday and then comes the fun of making the box to ship it in.