Ephemera

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

This is Part 4 in the series of short films documenting the (four)est art project in the mountains of northern Kyoto (Japan).

 

December 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(four)est

notes and impressions

part 4 (December 17 & 18, 2018)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

亀岡 | Kameoka

 

 

 

Kameoka still looks like a construction site. A new graveyard adjacent the original crumbling one. It’s a hideous concrete slab with a low cinder-block wall around it. A parking lot for the dead. The stream has been busy carving a more attractive route down the mountain. The rocks are thick with moss. The forest is wet. So is the painting. Most any forest floor is starved for sunlight. I wonder how anything grows in such a cool, damp, dark environment. This piece might just succumb to rot and decompose before the third year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

美山 | Miyama

 

 

 

In Miyama the painting has adopted a new angle. It is no longer level or perpendicular to the mountainside. There was some snow a couple of days before we arrived. But it couldn’t survive the warm-ish afternoon. Too bad. I can imagine the comedy of hunting for a painting buried in snow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

京北 | Keihoku

 

 

 

Number two (二) in Keihoku looks like a different painting. It is not an accelerated deterioration; it is the autumn leaves, now brown, pasted to the painting’s surface. Another layer of collage. Mother Nature getting into the spirit of the project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

久多 | Kuta

 

 

 

There are still some patches of snow in Kuta. Number three (三) seems to be the most indifferent and defiant. Perched proudly up in that ancient cedar it has been just lightly brushed by nature’s hand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Part 3 in the series of short films documenting the (four)est art project in the mountains of northern Kyoto (Japan).

 

October 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(four)est

notes and impressions

part 3 (October 4, 2018)

 

 

 

The typhoon (no. 21) in early September wreaked considerable havoc on the mountains in northern Kyoto.  Large swaths of forest mowed down the way a blind barber might cut hair. It was a sort of massacre, the normally vertical lines of the forest redrawn horizontally. By some miracle my paintings survived this assault, all four setting in the same place I left them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

亀岡 | Kameoka 

 

 

 

The Kameoka location suffered the worst damage. The whole mountain appeared to have moved some 100 meters down the road – boulders, trees, mud. Bits of pottery from another century unearthed. At first I thought perhaps a new housing development had begun. It looked like a construction site. Clean-up and repair. The painting is showing the first signs of weathering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

美山 | Miyama 

 

 

 

The forest in Miyama was cool and wet, green. Layers of growth and decay. Forest cycles. A pleasant smell of slow decomposition. The changes to painting number one (一) are surprising, just 6 months since the project started. There is mold and tiny mushroom spores growing. The kimono fabric has begun to peel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

京北 | Keihoku

 

 

 

In Keihoku, number two (二) is protected by the rock it is partially under (and maybe the gods). Part of the mountain above had slipped away and trees crisscrossed the stream like chopsticks dropped on the floor. The painting is mud spattered, a thin layer of earthy browns commingling with the blue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

久多 | Kuta

 

 

 

The forest floor had a thick carpet of arboreal debris in Kuta. It was springy underfoot. The painting is slightly rain-stained, but not really worse for the wear. Still more time for this location.

 

 

 

 

  

 

Studio Notes

Watching paint dry.  This is also painting.  It is an exercise in restraint.  Let the paint go where it will go, then wait and see what is revealed, what disappears.  It's a good idea to have a stock of beer when working this way.

 

 

Studio Notes

Delicious color.  Paint and paper.  Cool.  A swim or a walk in a forest, a light spring rain.

 

 

Studio Notes

It's easy to forget how a painting comes about.  It's easy to grow frustrated when you don't see anything, when there is nothing to coax or push.  But a painting is nothing if not a supreme test of your patience.  Give it time, let it breathe.  It will open up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Part 2 in the series of short films documenting the (four)est art project in the mountains of northern Kyoto (Japan).

 

June 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(four)est

notes and impressions

part 2 (June 17 & 18, 2018)

 

 

 

The forest has grown. It’s almost unrecognizable, like I’m visiting a new place. It’s a brilliant green, the forest floor waving in wispy ferns. The dense canopy of trees filters the sunlight creating soft spotlights for unseen performers.

 

Frogs leap from underfoot, crabs in a stream do a sideways tap dance. There are bugs hitch-hiking in my pant cuffs as well as vampiric leeches. The hotaru bukuro (spotted bellflower) rises up, straining to be noticed.

 

The paintings are mostly unchanged. Some leaves have fallen on number four in Kameoka and collected near the bottom. It appears to be an extension of the painting beyond its edges, a sort of blending into the real world. Number two in Keihoku has received a light dusting of forest matter – dirt, leaves, twigs. Numbers one and three are more defiant, resisting even a hint of assimilation. Give ‘em time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first in a series of short films documenting the (four)est art project in the mountains of northern Kyoto (Japan).

 

April 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(four)est

notes and impressions

part 1 (April 3 & 4, 2018)

 

 

 

The sakura along Route 163 were several days behind their cousins down in the city. Sections of truly spectacular color, that pale pink splashed across the shinryoku green mountainside.

 

The sun is warm. It seems a long time since I’ve felt this.

 

There are some moss-covered steps leading from a horse stable into the forest. Uchiyama-san and I follow these. I’m not sure what I’m looking for exactly. A home for the painting under my arm. There is an ugly fence, the type that delineates trespassing from not trespassing. It has been completely flattened in places by fallen trees. I smile. There are no boundaries in nature.

 

There is an ancient sugi (cedar), its trunk twisted and half decomposed. Still, life shoots up straight and tall 50 meters into the sky. This is the type of beautifully strange tree that is often revered in Shinto. I hang the painting from a point where a branch may have broken off a century earlier. It seems to float. 

 

 

 

 

 久多 | Kuta

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a small graveyard that has been reduced to rubble by an unsympathetic typhoon. Just past this is a grassy trail, a path into the forest. This ends after ten meters. From here it is off-piste, leaves and twigs crunching underfoot. In centuries past this hill was terraced for growing rice. The vague undulating outline remains. There is a cool stream meandering down the hill, cutting through the overgrowth and around green boulders. This is a loose guide.

 

An overturned stone from an ancient stonemason’s quarry serves as a stand for the painting. 

 

 

 

 

 亀岡 | Kameoka

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the gravel road where we park the car the mountain rises straight up. It is billy goat steep. The angle seems even too much for the sugi, many of which have given up and lie in various stages of decomposition on the mossy earth. There is a strong breeze blowing down the river below. I can imagine this as a tree-snapping gale in a typhoon. Every vertical cleft in the mountain shows signs of rampaging water. A forbidding environment for a painting. I find a strong shoot coming up from the trunk of a healthy tree and thread my painting over it. Like the painting in Kuta it appears to hover above the ground.

 

Tamba is alive and bursting with spring color, wildflowers and trees in full bloom, the air vibrating. This is what inspired Basho and a hundred other Japanese poets over the centuries.

 

 

 

 

美山 | Miyama 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mitsumata, dobs of pale yellow, hang in the air.

 

Up the steep mountain. Rain is falling. I follow the stream; there’s no other route. There is a large rock protruding from the earth creating a small cave. I discover a small, obviously man-made, stone orb half-buried in the hollow. A little digging reveals another. An altar? A grave? I feel I have been brought to this place. This is where the painting will go. We stack the two round stones as they might have been three or four hundred years ago. The painting fits into this mountain crease. 

 

 

 

 

京北 | Keihoku

 

 

 

 

 

 

The paintings stand in sharp contrast to the landscape, an unusual, foreign even, pop of color. It is a little shocking and amusing to see. In time, I hope, they will come to blend in with their surroundings. I wonder if four years is enough.

 

It is a strange feeling to leave these creations of mine in the middle of nowhere. Abandoned is a word not far from my mind. They have up until now lived in controlled environments – my studio and the gallery. Children is an obvious analogy. I think of them spending their first night alone in the absolute darkness of a forest. I think of the first rain that wets their surface. As if they are living things.

 

I am done. My part of this project is finished. Now it is Nature. It’s her turn. 

 

いいかんじ (iikanji) – a good feeling