Above: Fabrics and soft sculpture pieces by Mai Mai (large) and Izumon's character by her mother (small). On the table are comic books by Izumi (Izumon) Mikami
Above: Mikami's dark fabric works
Left: Detail of Mai Mai's silk screenwork
Mai Mai Sugimoto and Izumi Mikami held exhibition consisting mainly of dyed fabrics at Saito Gallery in the center of downtown Sapporo. Mai Mai was a student of mine (class of 05') and made some wonderful characters in clay, but moved on to dye works. She especially has a special affinity for natural vegetative dyes, and much of her pattern fabric works are done in this medium. More colorful works in which her characters appear are done through silk screen print. In this exhibition, she has also included a soft sculpture piece of one of her character that she made of strips of old dyed fabrics.
Mikami also graduated from Dohto University (class of 97') , and if I am not wrong is currently a guest lecturer there teaching woodcut prints and fabric dyeing. Mikami works with a variety of art medium, but is also noted for wonderful characters that appears in story illustrations, comic books, paintings and soft sculptures as well as wood cuts and fabric works. This exhibition appears to be most sombre of her works as she apparently wanted to explore variation of one pattern on bear. Unfortunately I do not have a detail photo here, but if you ever look closerly here, you will see all kinds of interesting figures and patterns within the major pattern that is seen in the photo above.
Unlike most of their other exhibitions, this one is almost all fabrics... 13 each. Besides the merit of each work, walls of fabrics in color and in black and white must have been imposing and fascinating in themselves.
Other than fabrics and soft sculptures are copies of comic book series by Mikami, "Warabimo" that describes a really funny sadistic/masochistic relationship of cute characer warabimo and his young lady owner. It's a great home made comic book and I have all the volumes that were published up to last year and brought them to US.
Though not too apparent in this exhibit, when it comes to developing a really unique, original characters both Mai Mai and Izumon Mikami are among the most talented I've seen.
you certainly had some very talented students and they are fortunate to have you document their works on your blog.
ReplyDeleteThanks Helen, but with Mikamai and Mai Mai, I didn't have much to do with their artistic development. Mostly they had innate talents, and the person that is standing in the midst of the exhibit in one of the photo image, Professor Nakajima who teaches silk screen print had much to do with nurturing them.
ReplyDeleteDohto University has outstanding print department, and silk screen print especially is probably one of the best if not the best in entire Japan... and I am not exaggerating. In terms of student accomplishment, quality of work, and countless development of new techniques, Professor Nakajima's silk print seminar tops and is nationally recognized. Me, I'm just a great cheer leader(laugh).