A Floating Bridge of Dreams – Japanese art show opens at Cannery Row
Painting by Emiko Wake: “Mambi,” the first blossom of a woman"
There are three of us sitting upstairs at Cannery Row Art Studios in Redondo Beach, and Emiko is replying to questions about “Wa,” the all-Japanese art show that she’s curating with John Cantu, which opens on Saturday.
Emiko’s interest in such an endeavor goes back to some key observations: Americans are often curious about Japanese art and culture, but it tends to end up as an unfulfilled curiosity rather than resulting in true, in-depth knowledge. One of the reasons for this, she continues, is that “Americans don’t understand our culture because we’re not giving information out. We’re not introducing enough. That’s the reason I really wanted to have the show,” which would not only reference traditional art, but through the work of contemporary artists convey a sense of what Japanese people today are thinking and feeling and wanting to express.
“We’ve always been just waiting for Americans to knock on our door, to ask the questions,” Emiko says. “It’s a good part and a bad part of the Japanese; we’ve been too modest, but we have to start talking to American people and I hope this art show will be the first step [in reaching out] to the local community.”
“Wa” curators Emiko Wake and John Cantu. Photo
“It goes both ways, though,” John says; “the Japanese also don’t know the American community. They stay to themselves and it’s difficult to meet Japanese, but through art… We have a great art community, thanks to Richard Stephens, and he gave us this opportunity. He came up to us about a month ago and said, Remember that Japanese art show you mentioned years ago? Why don’t you do it.”
Art museums may allot four or five years for a show to develop; Stephens gave them only a few weeks.
“It was a bit of a scramble to get it all together,” John admits. Emiko was in Tokyo at the time, visiting friends and relatives, and was caught off-guard. On the other hand, she set up meetings with some of the artists she knew, and this is how it is that, of the 11 artists featured in “Wa,” four of them live and work in Japan.
“‘Wa’ is a Kanji character for Japan, harmony, and convergence,” John explains. “And the idea of the show is to bring the community in the South Bay and the Japanese community in the South Bay together, through art.”
Which is summed up concisely in the show’s subtitle: South Bay and Japan – Connection Beyond Boundaries.
The roads they traveled
John Cantu’s reasons for wanting to promote an all-Japanese art show go back to his student days, if not before. “I love Japanese art and I’ve always appreciated the Japanese aesthetic.” He attended Cal State Dominguez Hills and had proposed a contrarian idea for his thesis: “I don’t think that modern art as such would have ever come to be without the introduction of Japanese art into the West. Starting with woodblock prints, but also the graphic ideas that influenced the posters of the Impressionist era, and then later the Zen paintings that I think helped shape Fauvism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism.”
The idea of becoming an artist wasn’t talked about behind closed doors when John was growing up: His mother was a professional artist, and later a doll maker.
“She encouraged art all the time at home,” he says, “and all three brothers were always scribbling. Yeah, she warned us all to be careful, but she never stopped us from doing it. It was always a big part of our family.”
That wasn’t the case with Emiko.
“When I was little, I really wanted to go to art school and become a painter – and my parents were against me. They wanted me to become a politician.”
A politician? Well, it ran in the family. So Emiko studied international politics and Japanese law and graduated from her university. But then, her filial obligation fulfilled, she compromised with her family and got a job with a marketing agency in Tokyo. Later on, she resigned from it.
“I talked to my parents and said I was going to move here, and then I started as a painter.”
She’s lived locally for over two years now, and as for Cannery Row Art Studios, Emiko says she fell in love with it at first sight. It was precisely the kind of artistic environment she’d envisioned.
A diverse lineup
When Emiko described her experiences with the people and the art of Cannery Row, she says, “the artists I know in Tokyo got so excited. They didn’t ask for anything, they just [replied], I want to be in that show, right away. It was quite easy for me to convince people to join us.”
Not only did they begin to send work that had already been finished, they commenced new projects specifically for “Wa.”
“It’s a good range of art, too,” John adds. “We have photography, graphics, painting, design, and also traditional cloth art.
“One of our artists, Usugrow, was so excited to be in the show – and then we didn’t hear back from him. It turned out he was run over by a car.” He pauses. “We were kind of half-joking; doesn’t he know he has a show in Los Angeles? He can’t get run over by a car! What was he thinking!”
Usugrow is in the show after all – and in the hospital as well. He won’t be among the one or two artists from Japan who are scheduled to be at the reception on Saturday.
“It’s a great team,” John continues; “it’s really working out well.” And, jokingly: “You should have seen us yesterday, screaming at each other. Don’t put that in the paper.”
No chance of it getting in, believe me.
John is impressed that these are all working artists, because in Japan – as we saw with Emiko – a career in the creative arts is often looked at askew. “It’s admirable, they’re brave; they’re giving it a shot, and some of them are fairly successful.”
“It’s really hard for people in Japan to get the chance to become a professional artist,” Emiko says. “Most of the people give up halfway and become something different. If they still want to do something (with art) they have to go to some different place.” And this is why she wants to help other Japanese artists to be seen.
“It’s tough for everyone,” concurs John, “but for the first time in the South Bay it’s an opportunity for specifically Japanese artists to show their work.”
Half-tones and subtle hints
The Japanese aesthetic that John Cantu mentions has seemingly been pervasive. The Japanese have long excelled in taking such Western products as radios and record players and automobiles and then refining them. Refinement could almost be a Japanese word because it’s part of their cultural sensibility. We’ll see it on view at Cannery Row.
“There’s a vein of Japaneseness within all of the art,” Cantu says; “You can see it, you can feel it, and I think that is what’s unique about Japanese art.”
“Maybe it’s a motif, maybe it’s a composition,” Emiko says; “maybe it’s the color they use, or maybe it’s the technique. But there’s some particular Japaneseness in each and every art.”
“I’ve heard it called an elegant simplicity,” Cantu adds. “It’s sort of this quiet beauty that sneaks in to all of the work, whether it’s pure Japanese traditional art or [has] more of a Western flavor. There’s a beautiful sensitivity that’s there.”
This sensitivity – with its restraint and its gentle shadings – seeps up through history from the Heian era and Murasaki Shikabu’s The Tale of Genji, and suffuses the stories and novels of Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata (such as Snow Country, “The House of the Sleeping Beauties,” and The Old Capital [Koto]). Peter Quennell called Japan “a universe of half-tones and subtle hints,” a description echoed by Donald Keene: “In Japanese literature the unexpressed is as carefully considered as the expressed, as in a Japanese painting the empty spaces are made to have as strong an evocative power as the carefully delineated mountains and pines.”
How much of this traditional sensitivity the viewer will discern in “Wa” is a good question, but it will certainly be there, undoubtedly contending with the fallout and residue of the late 20th century and the early 21st century’s faster-paced lifestyles. Emiko points this out. “The recent Japanese art scene is kind of chaotic,” she says. “Artists are trying to figure out their own way to express [themselves].”
In other words, Japanese art today, like art everywhere, is in transition and flux as artists respond to the time in which they live. For the viewer, the results of their interaction with the world around them will be interesting to discover.
See the photo gallery.
Wa: South Bay and Japan – Connection Beyond Boundaries opens with a reception from 6 to 11 p.m. on Saturday at Cannery Row Art Studios, 604 N. Francisca Ave., Redondo Beach. The show, which remains opens from Sunday through Saturday, 1 to 7 p.m., closes on Saturday, Sept. 25. Free admission. The artists from Japan include Hisai Kobayashi (photography), Masayuki Yokokawa (graphic design), Usugrow (painting), and Toshikazu Nozaka (painting). From the U.S.: Chieko Takano (painting), Emiko Wake (painting), Ima Kuroda (photography), Kio Griffith (painting), Yoji Abe (photography, graphic design), Marlene Sanaye Yamada (painting), and Seigyoku Kihara (fabric art). A Japanese deejay will be spinning East and West, and refreshments will be served. (310) 997-8348 or go to canneryrowstudios.com. ER