Size Matters

I apologise for the gap in my blogs, but it’s not all been biscuits and sake here. We have now long finished with the teaching part of the residency and are working on our personal prints. This morning I started to prepare the final fancy paper for printing by sizing it with rabbit skin glue and alum which, especially before breakfast, smells just as nasty as its name suggests. I’m wondering if I can get glue like that in the UK or if I’ll have to put my butchering skills back into practise and skin a few of the rabbits the cat brings in? There has been so very much to learn and so many things that can go wrong, starting with the size and ending with a Prussian blue thumb print in the wrong place (today’s misery).

The more I do and the more I learn, the further I see I have to go and most of it is a matter of experiment and experience. There is a phrase common to all the sensei who’ve taught us which is ‘It is your choice’ which is just about as helpful as Alec Guinness saying ‘Feel the force’. Both I think translate into ‘You’ll learn’ and I should shut up before they make me do it blindfold like poor Luke Skywalker…

Yesterday we were taken to a small factory where natural papers are hand made, largely using local bark fibres. Better than the Bolshoi, we watched four experts make the largest sheet of handmade paper available in Japan. Standing at the corners of a frame 5m by 2.5m, they each hurled some dozen buckets of liquid paper fibre in a perfectly choreographed dance; the solution fanning across the frame in rippling washes which, when drained, formed a perfectly uniform sheet. Later this was polished smooth with immense dedication and a single camellia leaf.

This evening I am going to be interviewed by my fellow artist Philpp. His blog is a shining example of what a residency blog should be and you can read it at www.nippontribeconnection.blogspot.com