The textile and paper artists tend not to create work that is as flashy as others, but nonetheless they are earning recognition every year at the annual International Exhibition of Art in the Annex of the Kyoto Municipal Art Museum. You might have to look carefully at its details to fully appreciate the artwork, but that extra time is usually worth it.

Yumi Inoue uses wax resists to make her subtly coloured pieces. If you look carefully, you can see the braided plait of hair as well as lace patterns. She won the Kyoto Prefectural International Center prize this year. Congratulations!  She was one of the seven artists highlighted in a show at Kokoka in 2015.

Kantaro Maeda uses traditional Japanese techniques used for making kimono to make one-of-a-kind paintings. Maeda uses the yuzen technique and kin nori (golden glue) to outline areas for dyeing. He sometimes creates pictures of his travels on silk. This, however, I think is of the herons near his home outside of Kyoto City. He was also in the show at Kokoka last year.

Cheung Lay (I am not sure of the Anglicized spelling of 張莉) won the Consulate General of China prize for this textile piece which also used wax resist. (Sorry for the poor quality of the photo.)

Masa-aki Tate did a very subtle piece called sign-sanctuary.

Rieko Arai, as you can see, won the Mainichi Newspaper prize for painting of a shell that was precisely dyed. The lines were crisp and clean with little or no bleeding.

Wendy Carroll, an Australian textile artist residing in Kyoto, uses a kind of applique technique for her patchwork pieces. This piece was quite dark and difficult to photograph under the fluorescent lights. More of her work was displayed in Par Art at the same time as this show.

Herberth Bolanos Rivera participated in this group for the first time in 2016. People had to step closely to see what it was made of.

Beach Walk

Crystal waves wash away footprints

Leaving a tideline of 

Memories and dreams,

Walking I pick up a shell.

by Deborah Stout

Deborah Stout is an Australian artist residing in Japan. Her pieces often involve layering of paper pulp and light shining through the layers. This piece, Beach Walk, includes the poem above and a tiny shell that looks like a small circle on the piece of paper on the floor in the photograph. At the same time as the Annex show, Stout was also in the same group show as Carroll at Par Art.

Stout is also an award-wining paper artist and made the largest sheet of handmade paper for the Guinness World Records together with Aiko Mochizawa in 2015. The YouTube video gives you an idea of how it was made.

Several of these artists have received acclaim recently, and I wonder what amazing things they will do in 2017.