ART LIVES TORIDE Where Art Is Born

─Koji Masaki

I have lived here for 26 years now since I entered the university and rented an apartment in Toride city for the first time.

At the beginning of living in Toride, it was a time when people would look at you like you were up to something bad if you tried to rent a large place cheaply, and the residents were very sensitive to the presence of unknown entities from the outside because of the Aum Shinrikyo Incident.

However in Toride, there was a welcoming atmosphere and people said, “Oh, you draw pictures, you are an artist,” so it was very easy for me to be active.

Artone Art Studio celebrates the 10th anniversary this year in 2020.
We feel like we have made this place by ourselves.

The reason for creating a shared studio is that it is a big problem for artists to decide where and how to continue to work after leaving university.
It all started when a group of artists in similar circumstances, who gathered at an event at the time, decided to see if we could somehow create our own production environment on our own.

At that time, I heard that there is a place with an abolished primary school which is not being used in Tone Town due to the declining birth rate. I approached the town　office and Toride Art Project for a permission to use the place.
At first, we endeavored to clean up the place and renovated it to make it usable.

I am currently working on relief paintings. In parallel with painting, I have been experimenting with various means of expression, such as three-dimensional objects and stone carving. Relief art fits me perfectly because it is in between two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects, or rather halfway between the two. I do a lot more than just that. I exhibit my works often in galleries.

Recently, I have been working in the education field. I am teaching subjects to students in different ages who go to elementary school or the oldest is 80-year-old, as well as at a university. Each life stage has its own art form, and I am creating my work by receiving stimulations from that.

This work is titled “Kogen” (Light Source) and I started this series after Great East Japan earthquake.

As a reaction to the terrible disaster, I started to create this series and wanted to make something beautiful in a carefree way. Many of my works are based on the theme of light. It could be interpreted as different words like a dream, a hope, or what you want to eat when you wake up in the morning. I am hoping to draw a group of things like small motivation.

I think my work is very self-centered, and I don’t want to think too much about what society is like. In the past, I felt that I needed to be acknowledged more. But now I don’t think that way and I would like to make my work that I don’t show to anyone and continue to work on it for 10 years, or I make it only for myself in a place where everything is blocked out. Instead of making work to meet a deadline, I will be in a position where I perhaps work on a single piece of work until I die.

─Toshio Nakamura

I am very concerned about the art materials I use, where and who makes them, so I try to make them from the source.

As a Japanese-style painter, I have used a lot of Japanese paper, but I realized that 90% of the Japanese paper on the market is made in foreign countries.I was curious about what that meant, and became interested in the materials used to make washi, and since there are few domestically produced kōzo, the raw material for washi, I decided to make my own raw material for washi and started planting kōzo trees.

Since we have a large garden and artists have gathered here, I thought it would be very interesting to make art materials from raw materials for paper as an artistic activity.

This year is the 10th year and it has grown to such a large size.The studio members and cooperating organizations work together to harvest the trees in December each year, peel the bark, and then make the white bark, which is then made into paper at a Japanese paper shop in Niigata Prefecture for our use.

Practical training activities at Tokyo University of the Arts “Half Farming, Half Art, Food, Education, Tourism – Creative Experience Service Industry Human Resource Development Project” (2018/11)

Since I make paper, I get to know paper makers, and I started to respond to a lot of work related to washi. For example, I held washi workshops for children. Then there is work using paper, such as repairing walls with washi.

For example, in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, I hold an event in which an old private house is renovated and covers the entire interior with washi paper, from the floor to the walls and ceiling, in a house wrapped in washi paper. It is the origin base for why I want to use washi, so it is a very important activity to me.

My method of expression is in the field of Japanese painting. It uses pigments,
which are colors made from crushed natural stones and glue it with nikawa-glue (gelatin) together on Japanese paper. That glue is a liquid made by boiling animal skins. It’s amazingly primitive, using stones on top of plants and fixing the stones in place with animal glue. For example, if the climate of Japan changes due to global warming, the kōzo trees will be altered, animals may disappear, and many other things have to be considered.

The more we think about the root of the problem, the more we can see environmental issues and what we need to care about now. I hope to convey this to young people.

─Shigeo Oda

I have been painting for almost 60 years. I paint whatever I feel like painting, whether it be landscapes, figures, or abstracts.

I have been allowed in this studio since a little after its establishment. Many of the teachers here are graduates of Geidai, so when I ask them about something I don’t understand, they are kind enough to help me. Until about 11 years ago, I had been working in a company for about 50 years.

The reason why I started painting is because I read an article in one of the newspapers that said, “After 20 years of doing artistic accomplishments, any person, even a salaryman, can almost become a full-fledged artist. Although my job in the company kept me busy at times, I joined its painting club so that I would have free time after work. There, a teacher from Nikikai came as an instructor and gave me guidance on a policy that valued individuality. In addition, as I painted in oils, I became interested in materials and attended a course where I studied about the material of Holbein for two years.

About 40 years ago, I applied for the first Japan Landscape Art Exhibition with a landscape painting which I painted on the bank of Lake Inba in winter and I was awarded the bronze prize. The CEO of Sogo, where the exhibition was held, bought one of my paintings and encouraged me, that is when my passion for painting began to grow.

For the past 10 years, I have been working on the theme of Yosakoi Festival, aiming to create pictures in which you can feel the movement of people and the sound. Very recently, I picked up dead leaves which I felt as if I were saying “Paint it before returning to the soil!” or those which people overlook and have been eaten by insects or shrunken on the road, then I turn them into paintings. I would like to continue to seek change and paint with a free spirit.

─Yoshitoshi Shinomiya

The environment in which I work is either in my studio or in a studio around Tokyo, so I go back and forth between the two. The kind of work I do in Tokyo is I am trying to make the deliverables bigger and bigger. It’s fine when I do that, like turning 10 things into 100 things, but the moment when I turn 0 into 1 is often when I am working in this studio. I feel like I am here when I want to stay and start something.

I principally create Japanese paintings, videos and sculptures. I mainly exhibit paintings in galleries, but my video and animation works have an aspect of the project in various media, apart from my pure art works.

Because of Covid-19 this year, several exhibitions were canceled. Instead, I have the impression that there has been more consultation on animation work in the field of video, due to the difficulty of creating live-action sites. I have made about four short videos, including one that will be published soon. I also got many related jobs with visual advertisements and posters. I will make a larger one next year, so I am in the process of preparing for that.

I think there is an impression that there is a distance between Japanese painting and video, but recently I feel that I am able to express common color tones, concepts, and motifs without much concern.

Before I felt uneasy with the traditional themes of natural beauty in Japanese aesthetics, but when I tried to bring that expression into video, I felt that there is a sort of affinity and I could do it without uneasiness. I think the factor of “dynamic” is closely intertwined.

Back then I separated the genres between two-dimensional, visual, three- dimensional works, but recently I have come to feel that they are all connected.
I feel like everything I did could be presented as “It’s Yonomiya. This is probably because the world is gradually becoming borderless in terms of expression, and a segment of the population is growing up that can find interesting things in a “jumble of genres”. I feel that the level of tolerance on the part of the viewer is also rising, and I wonder if this is what is freeing me to create my own works.

When I think of human work, I guess in the future, there will probably be many more jobs, and simple labor will be mechanized, which may have its merits and demerits. But I think that when such a situation occurs, people will be accepted by society when they can successfully express what they have. In this context, I believe that so-called art will become a genre that allows self-expression without systematic study, and that it will become very important in the future to be able to express the moment when you think, “What is this?”

 

─Kougo Nakano

This is my third year using this studio.
The location itself is a nice place, and it’s a nice environment. It’s a pleasant place. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?
There are various problems with electricity, but it is great that everyone is working on something or has a group of friends.
I’m a designer, so I’m not making artwork, but what I mainly do here is work on the machine that cuts the wood.

This is an original ring pillow for a wedding at a hotel called Risonare Yatsugatake of Hoshino Resort. It is made in the motif of their chapel. This is how it looks now, but we are doing various things.
Design is contract work, basically. I am stressed by this, so I do things like make and sell my own products.

What I want to do is to work around people’s lives in general, so I don’t really specialize in anything. I dare say that our generation is the generation of computers, so there are many things we have been able to do because of computers. I can realize my vision through the medium of computers.

I originally worked in architecture, then went to art school, and started working with computers while I was there. When I was a student, media arts were popular, like the Web. I feel like my work has spread from that trend.

In terms of what I want to do here, I would like to build a house, because there are lots of sites. A house as an art work and not for living. Since we are all working together, I personally think it would be nice if people recognize us a little better, and I think it would be good if we can become stimuli for that.

 

─Koichi Hagawa

My mother originally ran a Japanese restaurant in Tone Town, and I rented the vacant space there and lived there after graduating from college.
My wife and I used to walk around this area a lot, and we found this building and thought it would be interesting to use it for a studio.I asked Mr. Masaki and Mr. Yamaguchi if they would be interested in doing a studio, so we decided to rent this place.

I haven’t been painting much lately, but I was doing some ceramic watercolor and painting during the pandemic. Still life paintings, too.
Before that, I shot documentary videos and experimental films. When I was a student, I usually spent six months shooting videos and six months painting. My major was oil painting , so I paint both oil and tempera, as well as making three-dimensional works.

I was shooting footage with a 16mm camera and I was editing film, but when the equipment became unusable, I started shooting with a digital camera and was editing with that, but the editing machine broke down. So I left the work on films for a while and started painting with it again because I couldn’t be bothered to buy a new editing machine.

I’ve done very little production-like work lately. I teach painting at work, and when I come here, I spend a lot of time sharpening colored pencils and preserving these old stamps.
I spend more time arranging stamps than making artwork.
I’m not thinking of using this in my own work, but I find myself never getting tired of looking at it, so I hope I can create a work of art with the feeling that I enjoy looking at stamps.

I would like to do some more painting in the future, and I would also like to make some more videos. When I was making documentaries, I was interested in Poland and other communist countries, so I would like to go to Cuba or Russia to make films. I would love to go back and shoot in Ireland, which I ended up halfway through in the past.

 

─Soichi Yamaguchi

I belong to a gallery called EUKARYOTE and exhibit my work.
The concept of my work is based on the idea that the painting is its structure, including the story that leads up to its completion.

The structure of a painting is such that we interpret the image of the painting by looking at the paint on the top surface, however, I think that the interchanging that takes place to express the image to completion is one of the unique charms of a painting.

Even paintings called “planes” have physical layers of paint, and if you paint with a technique that focuses on that, you probably can see that the motifs of paintings that everyone knows will be transformed.

I would like to work to recapture the image and redefine painting by using images of famous series of paintings, such as Girl with a Pearl Earring, and showing the layers of paint.

In addition, I also think about how I can use flowers, landscapes, and other so-called “common picture images” in reverse, and how they might look different if I focus on the overlapping of the paints.

I have always loved comic books. Comics are plain when you see them on a single sheet, but when thousands of the same page are printed at a factory, there must be a moment during the production process when they are three-dimensional.

The way we see things changes depending on how we look at them, which I think is an essential theme of art in itself. My work is also constrained by stereotypes of images. I am interested in re-capturing these aspects because I am a painter.

In terms of the story behind the paintings, I was thinking that paintings unanticipated have a certain order, so I thought it would be good to use motifs that have a certain order from the beginning, so I decided to use Kanji (Chinese characters) and other characters that have a certain stroke order as motifs for the paintings in this series. When people say “letters,” they interpret it as meaning, but since they were originally pictures, I drew a lot of “human” as a motif as if they were “humans” , even though it is a simple manner.

Not only in the case of art but also paintings I believe that looking at something expressed, is a way to re-capture the experience of reinterpreting the world from the artist’s point of view, which is why I need to present a way of looking at things that people are not aware of. It is interesting to see things in a totally different way from what you knew before and this is the origin which is very necessary and the way of representing.

─Tomoyo Shinno

Before using this place, I was at Ino Artist Village and was referred here from them.
I originally wanted to be a fashion designer, and I entered a school called Setsu Mode Seminar, but they wouldn’t accept me only into the fashion department and I first had to enter the art department, so I did it. In the year of my graduation, I applied my work to Setsu Exhibition for the last chance and I was selected for an award, so that I got several opportunities and connections to continue creating art.

I haven’t studied art in art school, so I taught myself.
I concentrate on it when I have solo exhibitions. but I don’t make artwork all the time.
I am not particular about the materials I use, but I draw on paper with wax, or I make a lot of holes in paper with a punch to make something that looks like sunlight filtering through a tree.They are made from materials that are around us.

─Atelier Polepole

-Einoshin Moritani
We have decided that we will be active here twice a week, on Monday and Thursday afternoons.It used to be a little cramped when there were a lot of people, but now we are doing it quite comfortably. I have no complaints about the production environment here.There’s a garden, there’s a kōzo (paper mulberry) field, it’s the right size, and everyone goes home after relieving stress here.

We were a painting group called Kōryukai under the guidance of Mr. Masaki. When young artists, led by him,were able to rent this space as a studio from the town, they asked for volunteers from the general public who love painting to join them as a contribution to the community.Almost 10 years later, six of us survived.
We work in a variety of paintings, including oil, acrylic, figurative, abstract, and many others. The theme that the sensei gave us now is to do something a little different, so at the moment everyone is trying new things.

Nakamura sensei also makes kozo (paper mulberry) and we receive kozo shavings, which our female members make handmade washi paper, draw pictures on, and make book covers, which they sell at the town’s bazaar.
Although we are not creating artworks, we are also making shelves of goya (bitter melon) to shade the sun and grow flowers together, since the outside is spacious.

I wanted to have something to enjoy in my life, so after quitting my job as a salaryman, I decided to try painting as a way to have fun, and I started when I was 50 years old.Everyone is greatly enjoying life here.
I enjoy watching the young artists from the side, while supporting them wholeheartedly.

–Chikako Niwa
I hope to encounter something in my paintings that I have never done before.
When I paint, I always feel like I want to expand myself. Somewhere else I want to see it. Even though the thing is worn out, it is new for me. That pleasure, I want to encounter and I continue painting over 30 years.

–Chieko Fukushima
I like painting very much, and I also like colors, so I work with those two. Pursuing my favorite colors.
I haven’t been painting for that long, I’ve been in Koryukai for about 20 years? That’s the shortest of all of them.

-Yasuko Sakamoto
This time I am trying abstraction painting. I am currently groping for what I am going to paint, and I am trying to paint something abstract for now, but I am not sure how to go about it. Perhaps I leave it as it is, since it already looks like an artwork with just the base coat. It’s so nice to come here and have this kind of time twice a week. I mostly drink tea and have a chat.

-Chie Shibuya
Until now, I have mostly painted still-life paintings, but for some reason I found the sluice gate fascinating, so I decided to try to paint it and I am working on it now.
I have been painting for 30 years. I kinda started it to prevent blurring. When I was thinking about doing something after raising my children, I decided to try painting, which I had always loved, so I enrolled in a painting class in town. I raised my hand and was let in when everyone was invited to paint here, too.

-Emiko Sano
I have loved painting since I was a child, and there are not many other things I love more than that, so I was thinking that I want to paint again when my children grow up. So it’s not uncomfortable when I’m drawing, if you ask me if it’s a lot of fun… It’s like a part of my life.

─Yuki Yano

I am currently a doctoral student in the Techniques and Materials Laboratory of the Department of Oil Painting at Tokyo University of the Arts.
I have been using this studio since my second year of undergrad. So I’ve been here for 5 or 6 years. The production environment at Geidai was too small, so I was introduced to Masaki sensei who was here as a part-time lecturer. When I go into production mode, I find myself here most of the time.

Lately, I’ve been drawing on themes like the circulation of images.I start expanding the associations from stories, myths, and folktales. I don’t know what the final goal is, but I just keep connecting images to images. This depicts the theme such as the tale of Yamasachihiko and Umisachihiko from the Kojiki or Urashima Taro. The picture is like this capsule that went to Ryugu and finally came back to earth, from which a new life like an amoeba is born from DNA like the source of life.

When I became a university student in 2011, it was just after Great East Japan earthquake, so my sense of values changed quite a bit and I began to think that nature is dangerous, and now I am interested in the conditions for the emergence and origin of life.

I think painting is the best way to convey what I am thinking. I paint with the idea that it would be good if I could visualize and communicate with the feeling of not being able to verbalize or understand something through paintings.
The first time I wanted to be a painter was when I was a junior high school student. I thought that painting was the medium that I could best express my thoughts and feelings in a realistic manner. It’s like, “This is the only thing I can do.
I hope to push through and deepen the themes I have been thinking about for a long time.

─ Satoko Shiiba

My works are mainly based on using the fresco technique. I teach fresco year-round at kindergartens and culture classes, and depending on the season to high school students in a summer course as well. Every two years I teach sgraffito, which is a fresco decorating technique in the laboratory of Wall Painting in Geidai.

I grew up in the scenic district with old streets lined with houses in Kumamoto City.
It was beautiful to see the setting sun hitting the walls of the houses and the walls were painted plaster which were not white and painted cream color mixing pigment of soil in the evening. Then, for my undergraduate project, I suddenly decided to travel to Italy and do a fresco, and I did it for the first time for my senior year. My fresco experience started with painting a 2m x 3m wall at once, and I found it very interesting to paint plaster on a vertical wall. My teacher praised me that I am skillful which leads me to be here to the present day.

I created this work using the graffito technique in an old house that was destroyed by the earthquake in Kumamoto last spring and the spring before last. The technique is for exterior walls and was mainly used in Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Germany, and Italy in the Middle Ages, from the 1600s to the 1700s. I came up with the design, and made the parts together with the students of the Wall Painting Lab and then the plasterer finished it. The plasterer and I discussed the thickness of the frame, decorations, and even the slight incision were all thought up. We also used the traditional Japanese trowel technique. Plastering materials are also regional in nature, and the lime and sand available in each area differ slightly from region to region. The art of plastering itself is becoming quite obsolete, so I would like to somehow popularize it a bit more.

I am very interested in the fact that there is a Japanese painting specialist in this studio and they grow mulberry trees in the fields to make washi paper. I have become quite interested in Japanese design, so I would like to continue to think about designing Japanese-style decorations for the exterior walls of old houses.

Mosaic is in demand because it is more durable than fresco, and while fresco is in very limited demand now, students who have left the laboratory have been creating high quality work since they were in the lab, so I would like to create a place where the abilities and work of these younger students who have studied in the lab can be put to use.

─Asami Shiode

I usually make a conscious effort to stay in my studio. I don’t paint all the time, but I consciously take the time to be idle here and paint when I feel like it, so I am here for quite a long time during the day.
It is difficult to find a balance between life and production, and it is important to switch places because the next day after you have concentrated and gotten into it, you may not be able to speak as much or have difficulty with small interactions in your daily life. Even if you have a large space at home where it is easy to create, having a studio is very important.

I am dealing with planes.
About a week ago, I had a day when I woke up in the middle of the night because I was afraid of “being present.” …… I felt a kind of crisis and anxiety that I don’t understand, as if I would get stuck in the depths of it and not be able to live my daily life. I had an experience that made me feel as if thinking, ‘Someday I’m going to die,’ was, on the contrary, a relief.

In fact, I feel that everyone is probably living their lives while trying to cover up or come to terms with the fact that they are very afraid of existing, but my goal is to present a way to transform that perception of existence into joy.
My production method is a two-dimensional flat surface, but by forcibly “compressing” it into a flat surface, I try to create a sense of space and presence, and create a world that is two-dimensional but which you can enter.

For example, I think that Van Gogh’s paintings dared to add matiere to the paint, and I am now experimenting with the idea of creating a canvas that would enlarge the size of a linen cloth.

What I’ve been really thinking about lately is that we’ve become a society where consumption is the norm, and yet I feel that we’re living in a society where we’ve forgotten about it or aren’t even aware of it. ……There are so many things that I end up being passionate about and spending time feeling good about something, but when I consume it, I feel like it’s no longer interesting. It seems as if everyone is just saying, “Let’s devote ourselves to the next one,” and somehow we keep on rolling from one place to the next until they die. Adults can live with deception, although they feel some kind of hazy feeling. I think that children have a strong ability to feel that a moment is an eternity, but I have a strong feeling that adults consume a certain amount of time knowing that at some point they will no longer be able to enjoy it. And I was wondering if I am a part of that. In truth, Being adults is the best, isn’t it? That’s why I want my works to be seen by adults in particular.

I’m currently working on a painting that is swollen with pain and I call it “Tsumiki Painting”. I want to slant it a bit. I don’t want it to flow on a flat surface, but paint doesn’t rise up so far.
It took me so long to make one mountain. I’m struggling to find a way to have a moment like a print, and I’m struggling to deal with the difference between the speed to paint and the speed to see and experience it.
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