Tag: Michelle Zacharias
Peek Inside: New Old Drawing
Three for Five V
I cannot believe that I have managed to post some work every single day this week! Unlike other people, I do not usually draw sketches so I was worried about how easily I could do this challenge. I do have more finished drawings but I decided that in the spirit of all those posting sketches I would post works in progress.
Three for Five IV
Everybody who knows me knows that I like to draw large. Regardless of the medium, bigger is better. This means that it takes longer for me to finish an etching or a pencil drawing, because I have a large surface area to cover with thin lines. Liquid media like paint or ink can fill large areas much more quickly. Large pieces of artwork can also have other disadvantages in the Japanese market.
Three for Five III
Three for Five II
Three for Five
A friend on Facebook nominated me to do a challenge where you have to post three photos of your artwork each day for five days.
Why am I Blogging?
Autumn is a time to ponder many things, including why I started this blog. To help me figure this out, I joined the Blogging 101 group at WordPress.
Why are you blogging publicly instead of keeping a private journal or a website?
As a Canadian artist in Japan, I do not have easy access to the amazing network of artists, the artist union CARFAC, and other related information in Canada; I also do not have easy access to information in Japan because of a lack of existing networks, a lack of experience with the system here, as well as linguistic limitations. After living here for several years, I no longer had to spend all of my energy getting by, learning the language, and developing survival skills. Although I still had to work at my job that provided income, I finally had more energy to devote to my art. The next step was to create a website to promote my art.
Should I hire somebody to make a website? Then I would have to keep paying them to update it periodically. What a pain! Would a static site with a few pictures attract repeat visitors? Would I have to wait until I had a large collection of current artwork before I started? I wanted to start as soon as possible and perhaps use the new exposure as incentive to get more work done. After noticing that some sites had a blog attached, I realized that I could do that! I might even be able to do it by myself! It would also provide the immediate exposure or contact that I wanted!
What topics do you think you’ll write about?
My art and…anything else? Life in Japan? Those are a dime a dozen. I doubt that a J-blog would reflect much on my art or art in general. Life in Japan is not all about paper designs, family crests, and elderly craftspeople. I decided to focus on my art, my creative friends, art I see in Japan, and the role of art and artists in general. When I started my blog, I did not have many people to discuss arty issues with so I thought a blog would be a good outlet for me and my meandering thoughts as well.
Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
Who might read my blog when there are so many out there? I would like to think my friends all over the world will read it or at least look at the pictures to see what I have been doing. Creative friends will perhaps be more interested. Now that I live closer to Tokyo, I also hope that other artists in Japan, gallery owners, or curators will also take a look and hopefully follow it. Prospective buyers and art collectors? That would be nice. I also hope that other readers will include people who are interested in what the art scene in Japan is like for people who are not Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, or Yoshitomo Nara. I also hope that other artists in Japan will learn more about other artists who might even live in their neighborhoods or that they meet and start networking with me and others. I really do hope that my blog can be a way for me and for other creatives to expand their networks and get to know each other.
If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?
Timely question. I will have to post more often about the places I go in this upcoming year instead of just filing away their postcards, flyers, and pamphlets. That means I should also write much shorter posts more often. This is hard for somebody who is as equally verbal as I am visual! What else? I need to make my art more visibly prominent and not just focus on my writing. I do live in Japan after all, and many people will be intimidated by hundreds of words in English when all they want to do is just look at pictures of my art. I am in the middle of reorganizing my blog with my friend’s help now. It would be great if i could tinker under the hood of my blog without her help by the end of the year.
I hope that I can increase my audience and improve my profile in both the real and virtual worlds. Doesn’t everybody want somebody they do not yet know to read their writing and become fans of their work? Becoming friends would be an additional plus.
If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you can subscribe to this blog and follow me here at www.mzacharias.com or you can follow me (Misheru32) on Instagram.
Never-ending?
Made some changes to this drawing. I should let it sit for a while so I can decide later if it is finished or not. If so, I can varnish it. Title? I have been thinking that Warm Fuzzies might be a good idea.
Tape Tokyo
I was lucky enough to catch the Tape Tokyo exhibition at Spiral in Tokyo on December 14, its very last day. I had heard about the installation created with packing tape and I had hesitated going. I put it off and then put it off some more because I had no idea what to expect. Then I saw a photo of another installation by Numen/For Use made with black nets. I became intrigued. I convinced a friend to go with me, and we were spell-bound minutes after our arrival.
People waiting to go inside the installation were lined up the stairs inside the building. (That is nothing new in the Omotesando area where people seem to always be lining up to enter the newest restaurant or shop.) We were not sure at first if we had no choice but to line up to see any part of the piece or if we could walk around the perimeter of the space. Thank goodness that somebody else wondered the same thing and asked the woman behind us the same question! The line was only for those who wished to enter the cocoon-like structure; we did not have to line up to see the structure after all. We quickly gathered our bags and headed past the crowds into the inner sanctum of the atrium.
Neither one of us had been to Spiral before, so we had no idea how large the atrium was or even if it was outside or inside. The cocoon stretched out into a large concrete courtyard closed to all natural elements except sunshine and moonlight. A large spiral ramp that gives the building its name curled up to the second floor, but the space stretched up way above us. It looked like we were on location for the filming of the next in the series of Alien films, but it felt like one of those Moonwalk sites set up at summer carnivals where children bounce around inside. The plastic felt surprisingly strong!
Numen/For Use is an industrial design unit formed by Sven Jonke, Christoph Katzler, and Nikola Radeljkovic in 1998 and based in Austria and Croatia. They use the name, “For Use,” mainly for their furniture designs and “Numen” for other work. Numen comes from noumenon, meaning “substance”. This group has also created tape installations in Hasselt and Melbourne.