ART LIVES TORIDE Where Art Is Born

I moved from Kashiwa to Toride when I was in nursery school. I had played in a brass band until high school, but when I thought that it would be different to play music professionally, I decided that I liked to create something small and intricate. I had experienced making hand crafts with beads and drawing birthday cards, which made me happy when people enjoyed them. I think I was influenced by my father, who is an architect, and I started studying design at university. My awareness that I wanted to be a designer grew while I was studying.

I worked for a design company and was allowed to the manage progress control , design websites, etc. I worked at IID Setagaya Monozukuri University, a place where creators gather, and I really liked that space. I was always thinking about work. It was like my youth.

After working for 7 years, I left the company after having a child and the coronavirus pandemic. I was going to start freelance work in Tokyo. But when I returned to Toride on a trip back to my hometown, I felt too comfortable.

I knew many faces from the Toride Art Project, which I was involved in as a university student. When I walked around the housing complex, I was happy to see people I was working with at the time calling out to me. I was worried about raising a child for the first time, but I thought I could make it work here. My husband also said it was a good idea, and I decided to start my freelance career again in Toride.

Now I design websites and make flyers announcing events. I also get to work on logos and book covers.

First of all, I hear about my clients’ requests, and over time, I begin to see the kind of issues that they are facing. I am not the type of designer who has an own color, like “I do cool designs!”. Rather, I feel that I can move well when there is an issue or when the person I want to deliver the product to is clear.

I enjoy organizing the stories that come up and elaborating the structure. It’s like creating a story, or designing after setting a direction. I like that time.

Last year, I designed a medium to deliver a message to children graduating from junior high school via Toride Art Project. That was a leaflet to let them know that there is a public contact point when they are in trouble.

Just as art was for me, I wanted to gently convey the message that there are many ways to live, and places and people they can turn to when they are in trouble, so I used the sky to express the image of freedom. Lots of paper airplanes flying around represent that it is okay to have many different personalities. It is up to you to create your own life from a blank sheet of paper, and there are many ways to fold and fly. This is the message of the design. Although the theme was a bit heavy, I myself am the type of person who has a hard time fitting in with society, so I was able to work on this project with a sense that it was something very close to my heart.

The flyers I made were posted in apartment complexes and delivered to my old school. I think it is a very valuable experience to be able to directly experience firsthand the reactions of the children who receive the flyers and the people who attend the events.

Postcard painting by Naoki Tomita Night Rain/2014 photo: Keizo Kioku

From now on, I would like to expand my activities to child-related design, utilizing the insights I have gained from my child-rearing. I was actually not very interested in children. But when I gave birth to a baby, the feeling of love was getting stirred up . Then I began to see things that I had not seen before. I think this is true in any field that being a participant in something is like that. I feel that the things I create and the way I think about have been changed.

There are a few other things I want to do. One of them is to create a place that will serve as a hub for the community. There used to be a bakery called “Donguri” (Acorn in English) )in Ino Danchi that was loved by the residents. I really liked that bakery, and I would like to create a place like that.

My husband is a person who has been in the food and beverage business all his life, but now he has started training in bread baking. My husband bakes bread and I use the place as my studio. When you drop by the place because of the delicious smell, you meet many people there, and before you realize it, you become attached to Toride and want to come back again. I want to create a fun place where people can discover, communicate, and connect with the charm of Toride in this housing complex, the former site of Donguri.