DM, Direct mail, My invitation card

It takes practice to photo a painting, lighting, various adjustments. The bigger the painting the worse it is. But even a small one like the little oil I chose for my invitation card took time. Finally I got it the way I wanted and sent it to the printer, and the e-photo the printer sent back looked good. The card did not.

Every invitation card I have ever made has been wrong. People like to point this out at exhibitions, holding cards up to paintings, pointing out the differences. From painting, to photo, to print, lots of places to slip. It unavoidably goes wrong, but never so wrong as this year.

photographing paintings

It is remarkably difficult to get a good photograph of a painting. I spent most of this week trying to get a photo for the invitation card to the October show. In the end the dragon helped.

October - Online? Live?

I blunder on. Today I took photos

Golden Sumida

Covid and the next exhibition

Does anyone know what to do with Covid, with the Delta?

I don’t. A new semester is starting in the universities. Will I be teaching online again? In October I have my exhibition in my studio. Do I open it up to the public? What is safe? What is responsible?

This season I prepare. Frame making. Today I was backing ink paintings. I go on as thought it were going on.

Making Frames

Donald Richie called the shrine at Ise a perpetual motion machine. He contended it would out last the pyramids. As the pyramids crumple, Ise remains the same. They rebuild it every 20 years, each generation the same as the last. The master carpenters that build it teach the next generation. It has been going on for 2000 years.

I have this one life. Every year I make frames. This year it felt like I was Ise. I do frame building every summer  to teach myself how to do it again next year.

Ise has done it 100 times, me just 32.

This year I am building for my October exhibition, Living In Japan, New Paintings

Exhibition 2023

Little streets exhibition, October, 2023, art, painting

Tears of a sinful woman

Mike carries a rucksack, always heavy. Yesterday he pulled out a fat old book and gave it to me.

It isn’t the sort of book you start at the beginning. I tried the middle. In less than a minute I learned that the Vinaya-sutra says, “the marks on the sole of Buddha’s foot were made by the tears of a sinful woman”

I have been searching for the title for my October exhibition. Tears of a Sinful Woman, did not pass the Me Too test. I’ll keep looking.