Serentripity Workshop at The Asian Art Museum

A few weeks ago I conducted a craft workshop for Serentripity Learning Vacations at The San Francisco Asian Art Museum. My workshop was part of a series of activities including furoshiki gift wrapping, Japanese teas and snacks and a tour of the Japanese exhibits. Here are a few images of the day.
Introductions by Katherine Relf-Kanas of Serentripity.























The day started with a presentation by Furoshiki.com. A local company that sells and promotes furoshiki craft.



















An interesting side note: The Japanese Ministry of Environment began a campaign in 2006 to promote the furoshiki as a conservation alternative to plastic bags. It has posted a furoshiki diagram that shows how to wrap objects of different shapes. This is such a nice development as modern Japanese packaging has tended to be plastic happy....wrapping food items in many layers of plastic within plastic within plastic. More info is here at the Japanese government website.

Below: Snack break! Delicious chibi taiyaki snacks provided by Sweet Breams of San Mateo.


















I then conducted a three hour Japanese purse making workshop. There was a tour of the Japanese collection to break things up and our docent also brought in her own collection of unique Japanese textiles.


















Below: some of our supplies: Sushi grass try for bottom of purse, plastic sushi grass, Photoshop created iron ons. Participated sewed onto strips of Filipino noodle flour bag canvas.


















Below: A workshop participant working on sashiko detailing. I get my sashiko supplies at Eddie's Quilting Bee.























Hard at work.


















Completed purses.

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.

Haiku Project for Asian Art Museum

Last week I completed another art/education project for the San Francisco Asian Art Museum's Lords of the Samurai exhibit. This was probably the most fun of all the projects for me. I love attempting to write haiku and children enjoy playing around with this type of poetry, too.

There was a fantastic article in The L.A. Times a few weeks back about the role of poetry in the history of a particular samurai line. The article's dramatic opening describes the saving of the Hosokawa samurai clan from certain defeat in battle. The samurai leader Yusai Hosokawa was deemed such a valuable poet that the emperor stopped the battle and saved a highly artistic samurai clan in the process.
Here is the article:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-samurai19-2009jul19,0,3632270.story

Below is my craft project for the museum. It will be posted on the Asian Art Museum's website (scroll towards the bottom) in a few weeks.

















































This above haiku project is fun to do with children for Poetry Month in May.
Here is a great children haiku book for reference:
Haiku Picturebook for Children
I know there are other good children haiku books out there, but I really like this one because the illustrations are great and it has both the Japanese and the English translations.

Lords of The Samurai

The San Francisco Asian Art Museum hired me to create eight craft lesson plans that tie into their current Lord of The Samurai exhibit. Each project is designed to be simple and use a downloadable template and instructions. These projects are introduced on the Lord of the Samurai blog and then from there link to there website where you can download the template files and instructions.
Below are images of the projects created so far.
Samurai Helmet (Kabuto):























Here is a sample instruction sheet. This series of projects has really gotten me to work with the software program Illustrator again. This particular helmet project was difficult to design in a simple manner. Earlier versions were much more detailed and complicated and even this simplified version's instructions were a challenge to fit on one page. The are three separate pages of templates for this project as well.























Samurai Half Mask (Mempo Mask) complete with sweat drain tubes (made of straws) and whiskers made of recycled produce netting:























Samurai Tosei Gusoku-Type Armor:























Samurai Sword:













Hands down, this was my son's favorite project. You can see from his face how thrilled he is to have created one. He helped me design it, too. This is his prototype.























Next I will be creating the lesson plan for a haiku project. I have conducted haiku projects several times with elementary school children and it is very entertaining and engaging. All these templates will be posted on The San Francisco Asian Art Museum's website (scroll to the bottom of the webpage to see them). The museum will be uploading a new project every week.

In a few years I hope to put together a book of all the various museum craft projects I have created. I have quite a collection now. I think that some can be quite fun for adults, too; I have been asked if I do bridal showers and corporate events when I conduct my paper hat workshops. Recycled materials are often designed into my projects adding an important if subtle conservation message. Below is one such project (for the de Young Museum) that used recycled sample wallpaper books, discarded tie fabric and produce netting to create fun and stylish hats.