Fellowship of Dawn

Everyone has their favorite time of the day.  I am a morning person.  I love the dawn and the sunrise and the sound of birds waking up to the new day.

There is nothing I like better than camping and waking up to a cool, crisp dawn.  Make some coffee on the fire, quietly listen as everything in nature wakes.  Walk to the water’s edge….hear the waves lapping against the shore before you can even see it.

Then – that magical moment of dawn when the clouds start to brighten.  The indigo of night, inch by inch, changes to greys before the riot of pinks, purples and oranges of sunrise.  It is a moment of fellowship with nature and with God and with life.

Beam

Beam

Living in the 'flatlands' of mid-Michigan, surrounded by wheat and corn fields, it is not unusual to see big trees.  But they are usually second or third generation, standing alone in someones yard or a park.  Michigan was pretty well clear cut from shore to shore and top to bottom back in the 1800's.  Conservation practices were unknown.  Man ruled and nature and all it's bounty was there for the taking and for our every use.
The opportunity for me to see virgin stands of the last giant trees in Michigan came while I was Artist in Residence at Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.  Hiking the Government Peak Trail, Lake Superior Trail and Big Carp River Trail left me in awe of what Michigan must have looked like. 

Huge, majestic, beings that grew for centuries in the storms and winds of Lake Superior.  They strengthened their bones against the onslaught by growing roots into the rocks of the escarpment, wrapping around and through them.  

They grew slowly and with purpose up to the light of the sky and 

a beam of light from the sun.

The trees were deemed too difficult to get to and fell back in the day and so were left.  Today, without the protection of the Park, all kinds of machinery would be moved in and fell them with no problem.

What troubles me is how big business and government love to worm around the protection placed on our public lands.  Lands that WE, the taxpayers own!  The moves recently to go under these lands, searching for oil, gas, minerals.  They put forth the argument that they are not disturbing the Park - we can still hike the trails and enjoy the wildlife and views above ground.  And look at all the jobs they will create!  Goodness!  We should all embrace their compassion for us!
Yet they maim the land gaining access and then poison the groundwaters that flow into the streams, rivers and the largest source of fresh water on earth!  They don't think about the consequences to the next generations that can never repair their damage.

We need to stand tall, like these giant trees.  Grow deep strong roots.  Hold on tight against the winds that conspire to fell us.  We need to reach with everything we have toward the sun and harness the energy given by it instead of digging into the deep places where what we do is hidden from the light.

We need to Beam.

Lessons from IMHC 2011 and Visiting Japan

I have had some time to get over the jet lag of the return trip from Japan and to think about the lessons learned from the First International Moku Hanga Conference and the additional 10 days I spent exploring Japan.

Traveling to Japan
As a conservationist and environmental artist, I was concerned about the impact that the March earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster had on the conference, the people of Shiga prefecture (Michigan's Sister State), Kyoto and the environment. It seemed to me that the best way to support the living was to follow through with my plans to go to Japan. I was dis-couraged about going by many well meaning friends and family, which is understandable. But, as was pointed out to me over and over again in Japan, it was over. Life was going on. I was told many times to encourage everyone I knew to come to Japan. The impression in the U.S. was that the whole of Japan was affected by the nuclear disaster. But that is like saying the the whole of Pennsylvania and the east coast was rendered unlivable after the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown.

I saw and felt the deep, deep sorrow among the local Japanese people that I met about the thousands of lives lost. The economic fallout from people changing travel plans, from business lost - the domino effect will be ongoing. The environmental impact is incalculable at this point.
But to everyone who reads this............GO! The warmth and generosity of the Japanese is unparalleled. You will be welcomed! It is safe! The food, lodging, sights, sounds, people are rich in flavor, texture, personality and hope. Go! Enjoy!

1st International Moku Hanga Conference
I'll just preface this by saying - I can't wait for the next one!

People first - I was so happy to meet the real people that I have only know through forums, print exchanges and emails: Annie Bissett, Andrew Stone, Jan Telfer, Florence Neal, Preston Lawing, George Jarvis.
To be in the same room with the authors of my printmaking textbook, The Art and Craft of Woodblock Printmaking, Kari Laitinen and Tuula Moilanen, let alone get to know them as colleagues, was, as I explained to my tool collecting husband, like meeting the inventors of the screwdriver!
I was able to meet and get to know artists that I have admired: Karen Kunc, April Vollmer, Paul Furneaux; innovators in the printmaking world: Richard Steiner, founder of the Kyoto International Woodblock Association and Susan Rostow, inventor of Akua Kolor; printmaking instructors from around the world: Michael Schneider, artist & professor at the University of Austria, Vienna; Seiichiro Miida, artist & professor at Tokyo University of the Arts; Bess Frimodig of the University of West England, Bristol; Keiko Hara, artist and Professor of Art Emeritus at Whitman College, Washington.

The demonstrations, workshops and presentations opened my eyes to the history, complexity and commitment to the art of moku hanga. I came away with the absolute certainty that we, as a group, are determined and resourceful; generous with instruction and encouragement.

One lesson that I learned was that as a moku hanga printmaker, the tools, paper and techniques that I use and love are "endangered". If there was a list of endangered art forms as there is with animals, moku hanga would be at the top.

THE most important lesson I learned was that the spiritual feeling that I personally have as I create a print is shared by moku hanga artists now and through-out history. It is something hard to express. But we know it. And I have found that people viewing my prints know it too. They describe a peacefulness, a depth of meaning and a meditative feeling that comes over them.

My friend Annie Bissett, who I spent so much time with outside of the conference and at the same workshops and presentations, has expressed it so eloquently that I won't even try. I will quote her, (with my changes in gray ink) and also refer you to her wonderful blog, Woodblock Dreams.

"..........a carver named Hiroshi Fujisawa was demonstrating traditional carving. Fujisawa san is a professional carver who works in a home-based workshop in Kyoto. He was an apprentice beginning at age 16 to master carver Kikuta Kojiro and has now been carving for over 50 years. He is said to be one of the best carvers in Japan.

By the time I made it over to Fujisawa san's demonstration, he had finished carving and was giving a talk about how his study of Buddhism informs his work. In his talk he used the words kokoro (心) meaning heart/mind/spirit and kuuki (空気) which means atmosphere/mood/tone. He spoke about the importance and the difficulty of representing these qualities, the heart of the artist and the tone of a place, in a print.

As he spoke, I thought about the "kokoro" and "kuuki" in my own work. I thought about how I've been using mokuhanga to express my thoughts and feelings (kokoro) about Michigan, it's waters, environment and threatened beauty and wildness. I thought about how I often surround myself with the music of nature sounds and books and photographs about Michigan and water in an attempt to create the "kuuki" of a time and place in my studio while I work. I've always felt that somehow those feelings and songs and words and ideas that I'm immersed in, the emotional/mental/spiritual energy I use to create my work, become embedded within it and are readable by the viewer, however subtly.

It seemed to me that Fujisawa san was saying that something inherent in mokuhanga allows these invisible and ineffable qualities to be expressed, that something about the method itself allows this process of embedment to occur. My answer to what it is about mokuhanga that allows these ineffable qualities to appear would be the following list.


- The slowness of the method allows (or forces) one to go deeply into the work.

- The tradition and history attached to the techniques and tools give them an almost ritualistic quality.

- The deconstruction of an image required in separating the colors onto different pieces of wood and then putting them back together into a new form offers many opportunities for the artist to react and respond to the materials in the process, embedding new decisions in the "memory" of the printed image.

- A woodblock artist uses her whole body to make the work. There is a very physical wrestling with the resistance of the wood in order to carve an image, and printing with a baren instead of a press also requires a lot of physical energy. The artist's body is part of the print."

For you to see into my soul and how I feel about the waters and landscapes of our precious world is what keeps me going. My faith in and respect for the Creator and the creation, the using of former living things - the kozo (mulberry plant) of the paper, the wood that I carve - and asking them......pressing them, to give of themselves again to draw you in to a moment or a place - that is moku hanga to me.