New Frames - craft

I believe in craft in art. One of my favorite teachers used to say, “He can make a painting that will last a thousand years, but he can't make a painting.

That's a different problem. Art is not craft but sometimes art comes from craft, from procedure and technique.

 Frames are part of my art. I make the frames or the scrolls to match paintings.

I had an idea of the frame being an abstract work of art that serves the figurative art inside.

This year’s frames borrow from frames I made 25 years ago for the Stone Men exhibition. They are build from 9 layers to build integrity and texture. Wood, paper, plaster gesso, silver, finally urushi, cashew, and oil paint.

There is some suspense involved as you can not know what they will look like until the final layer is put on then rubbed and polished, as though it were a copper plate for an etching.

Frames

My frames and scrolls are part of the art and they change year by year to fit the paintings. I’m thinking of revisiting a frame I used twenty five years ago on my jizo paintings. It was a successful exhibition with all paintings sold but one I held back, this one of the Red Plum Jizo.

I noticed that after 25 years the surface of the frame has become dull in spots. I had used wax as a protective covering. I wonder if anyone that bought a paintings back then knows to rub the frame gently with a soft clean cloth to bring back the original tone.

Complicated thing owning art,

March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a teachers meeting

Every new year I learn how to paint again. This year I used thick, rough washi and investigated some of little alleys, the roji in Yanaka.

Everything is interesting if you take time to look at it.

What a privilege to be able to look. if you don’t draw I recommend it as a form of meditation that broadens your life.

Yuito’s Alley, 2022

February to October

February is when October is built. October is the exhibition. For that I paint in February. If I'm lucky things start to come together about now. Often they fall apart and are built again.

Ideally the summer is for putting it together, making scrolls, frames, invitation cards and the like.

February, Power of the ball

My ballpoint pen has been my friend this lunar new year

New year, new art

I found this fine thin washi paper under some bond in my desk. Did I buy it? Was it given to me? Was it a free sample?

Hard to say. But it is distinctive and just what I wanted to start a new year of painting.

Every year I paint for my exhibition that happens in October.

By having the exhibition I interrupt my painting. Between the exhibition and the demands of the university I am away from actual painting long enough to forget how to paint, which is a good thing.

I can start to learn again. I’m hoping this new old washi will help me with this year’s discoveries.

New painting in progress, next some comes some shading, perhaps even colors