Join us this Thursday July 25th at the Arundel Farm Gallery for a FREE lecture on creating Japanese-Inspired Gardens here in Maine!
To reserve a spot, please see our Facebook Event Page, or contact the Gallery here
Hashi / 橋 Maine Aomori Student Art Exchange Opening Reception
Berwick Academy, partnering with Friends of Aomori, is pleased to host Hashi / 橋, the second annual Maine-Aomori student print exchange exhibit at Berwick Academy’s Jackson Library Gallery in South Berwick, Maine from March 27-April 12, 2019. Hashi means “bridge” in Japanese.
This exhibit will feature over 70 prints made by students in Aomori, Japan. Raegan Russell, Visual Art Chair and art teacher at Berwick traveled to Aomori as a teacher delegate in November, 2018 and that trip sparked this exhibition.
We hope to see you there!
Second Annual Children’s Print Exchange Show Opening in Aomori
The second annual Children’s Print Exchange between the students of Maine and Aomori had its official opening at the Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum in Aomori this past weekend! Shared below are the newspaper feature and it’s annotated translation.
We hope to see you at the upcoming reception here in Maine at Berwick Academy (see this post for the show details)!
Thank you to our partner Ono-san at the Munakata Museum for this annotated translation of the Newspaper Article shown above:
Teacher Delegate for 2019 Children’s Print Exchange
This past September, Raegan Russell was chosen after an open call for applications from art teachers in Maine who would be interested in both representing Friends of Aomori on a Delegation visit to Aomori, Japan, and leading the creation of the next installment of our Children’s Print Exchange. Raegan’s visit to Aomori was completed this past Sunday (November 18th, 2018) and now her and her Berwick Academy students will soon begin working on their woodblock prints! These prints will be sent to Aomori in February, the same time that we here in Maine will receive the prints from the Japanese students (exhibition location TBA).
Attached below are some pictures Raegan shared from her visit; it certainly seems that a wonderful time was had by all!
You can also read a brief Japanese statement about the Delegation visit on this website: https://www.toonippo.co.jp/articles/-/114623
Stay tuned to this website as well as our Facebook Page for more updates on the 2019 Children’s Print Exchange!
Fourth Annual MAPS on View in Aomori
The Fourth Annual MAPS Exhibit has received a wonderful reception at the Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art in Aomori, Japan! We will be posting updates on the Fourth annual MAPS Exchange as they come, so stay tuned. There are many exciting things happening here at Friends and we can not wait to share them with you!
Thank you to our partner Ono-san at the Munakata Museum for this annotated translation of the Newspaper Article shown above:
① Headline: Prints-Exchange Exhibition between Maine and Aomori is to be held this year, too.
② Sub-headline: To be displayed at the venue of Aomori Citizens’ Culture Festival
③ As a part of the Print-Exchange Project between Maine and Aomori, 10 prints by 10 artists in Maine reached the Munakata Museum, in charge of the project in Aomori.
④ The Print-Exchange Project started in 2015 and this year is the 4th. These prints are black-and-white and multi-colored ones. In particular, “Malaga Girl” is accurately carved in detail and precisely expresses cloth-quality as well. And the “Bird” carved in full-frame in size draws attentions of its beautiful grain of wood in print.
⑤ Mr. Ono, Director of the Museum, also makes his efforts in translation of the titles into better Japanese interpretation so as the visitors to understand the Maine artists’ intentions.
⑥ Mrs. Kudo, aged 71, a member of the Board of Trustee and a coterie member of the Japan Woodblock Academy founded by Shiko Munakata, evaluated the prints highly and make her comments, “All the prints are excellent in conveying the strong intentions of 10 artisits, respectively, and each one’s earnest pursuit of techniques in woodblock print.”
⑦ In the exchange project, the prints by elementary-school pupils are exhibited every year and in November a woman teacher from Maine is coming to Aomori under the sponsorship of Aomori Morning Rotary Club. She is expected to promote the printing education in Maine after her visit to the two schools in Aomori and her observation of the print-work classes as well.
⑧ The two, Director Ono(left) and Mrs. Kudo(right), are in the examination of the prints from Maine for the 2018 Exhibition.
Fall Foliage in Aomori
While Maine is in its peak season of fall foliage, and encountering the subsequent stream of leaf-peeping tourists, Hirosaki Castle Botanical Garden in Aomori, Japan is gearing up for its annual Chrysanthemum and Autumn Foliage Festival which runs from October 20th through November 12th. During this event, the Garden is filled with different events for visitors, including craft-making, boat rides, petting zoo, apple pie tasting, and many other Autumn related activities. There is also an ‘Autumn Foliage Light Up’ where the garden is open late (until 9pm) and the trees are lit-up in the night by outdoor lights in order to accentuate the bright colors.
Of course, the Hirosaki Castle Botanical Garden is not the only place to see the fall foliage of Aomori; in fact, there are many viewing locations scattered throughout the region! Perhaps the most well-known viewing location is the Oirase Gorge, a National Natural Monument and National Scenic Place of Beauty located in Towada-Hachimantai National Park . With the thick forest and roaring waterfalls of the Oirase Gorge, hikers can experience fall foliage in an untouched, wild environment far away from the hustle and bustle of Hirosaki City.
For information on more areas to view the Fall Foliage in Aomori Prefecture, or to learn more about the two highlighted here, please click on the links below!
Hirosaki Castle Botanical Garden:
http://www.hirosaki-kanko.or.jp/en/edit.html?id=autumn-foliage
https://www.en-aomori.com/culture-044.html
Oirase Gorge:
https://www.en-aomori.com/scenery-002.html
Other Places:
https://www.en-aomori.com/tag/autumn
https://www.kyuhoshi.com/2017/07/18/best-places-to-see-autumn-leaves-in-aomori/
Gonohe International Music Festival
If you will be in the Gonohe area, or are planning to make a trip to Aomori this coming Fall, you may want to think about planning your trip around the one-of-a-kind event known as: The Gonohe International Music Festival!
Beginning in 2013, the Gonohe International Music Festival is a free event that takes place annually at Kowataritai Park in the town of Gonohe, which is located within the Aomori prefecture. Started by Dave Herlich and Michael Warren – two friends who were English teachers in the town of Gonohe for several years – as a means of intercultural outreach and community, the Gonohe Music Festival has expanded over the years to include a wide variety of musicians, cultural performances, and seasonal/specialty foods from around the world as well as Japan/Aomori. While the festival features many cultural aspects unique to the Aomori prefecture, the Gonohe Music Festival also includes musical acts from a variety of foreign cultures and countries – such as a West African Drum Line (2013), a Reggae group (2015), and Beatles covers (2016) – while additionally showcasing Japanese indie, rock, jazz, fusion, and traditional music groups/bands.
The Fifth annual Gonohe International Music Festival will be held Sunday, October 8th of this year (2017) and is an all day affair – running from Sunrise to Sunset. While the music lineup has not yet been released, looking at the lists from previous years, it is safe to say that 2017 is sure to be a blast!
All images property of http://www.gonohemusicfestival.com/
To hear samples of the music played at the 2013 Gonohe International Music Festival, click on the link here: https://gonohemusicfest.bandcamp.com/
A commentary by the founders of the Gonohe International Music Festival on the back story, goals, and future of the festival is available for listening here: http://www.pechakucha.org/presentations/harmony-in-aomori-the-gonohe-music-festival/play
For more information and to keep up to date on the 2017 line-up, please visit the festival’s main page at: http://www.gonohemusicfestival.com/2017
Cape Elizabeth Middle School’s Festival of Curiosity
Friends of Aomori had an absolute blast last week at Cape Elizabeth Middle School’s Festival of Curiosity!
FOA held a workshop educating students on the art of printmaking, talked a bit about the influence of Japanese woodblock printmaking on the art form, and posed the question: “How does sharing global art affect our local communities?”
Of course, we also talked to some of them about the unique Sister State relationship between Aomori and Maine that we foster. It was a busy day, but the kids were a great crowd!
The Japanese Woodblock Printing Process
In line with the opening of the 2017 MAPS exhibition, this weekend’s written feature will be focusing on the process of making traditional Japanese woodblock prints. While not all of the prints in the MAPS exhibit are made in this manner, the process and its cultural resonance in Japan are certainly an integral part of and influence on printmaking worldwide.
(To see more details about MAPS 2017 see our home page)
Before delving into the process, first a brief introduction into the history of woodblock printing in Japan:
“Woodblock printing came to Japan during the eighth century and became the primary method of printing from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries. As in China, the technology was first used to duplicate Buddhist texts and then later, books of Chinese origin. It was not until the 1500s that books originally in Japanese began to be printed. Black and white illustrations were a part of these early texts, to which color was sometimes added by hand, but eventually colored prints developed around 1765 as printing techniques improved. The first colored prints in Japan were original works of art, which soon led to the publishing of the popular, single-sheet ukiyo-e” (Khan Academy).
The woodblock printing process and the artistry of it that developed in Japan led the country to develop it’s own unique style, perspective, and craftsmanship in woodblock printing – a style which became known as ukiyo-e, or “images of the floating world”. While artists now are based less around the traditional ukiyo-e style, the technical process developed in Japan is still in use today.
Suzuki Harunobu (1724–1770)
Tsuchiya Koitsu (1933)
The technical process of making a traditional woodblock print is intricate and requires an intense amount of concentration, accuracy, and skill. Listed below is the step by step methods of making such a print:
- The block carver begins with a flat piece of wood – typically cherry – and take the prescribed drawing and place it face down onto the block
- The piece of paper thus applied would then be made transparent by rubbing it with oil and then removing the paper so that the reverse image of the ink was transferred to the block
- The carver would then outline the areas that were to be inked/printed black and, after doing that, would carve away the areas that were to be left blank
- This part of the process creates the block which would be used to print the black lines and is known as the “key block”
- This process would then be repeated for every color that would be used within the image, resulting in different blocks for each different color.
- In order to retain accuracy in the printing of the different colors onto the single image/page, a registration key is used – typically a kagi (a raised “L” shape which fits to one corner of the block and into which a corner of the page is placed) and a hikitsuke (a raised bar usually laid along the long-side of the block and into the corner of the hagi)
- The printing process of a single sheet continues by using the various blocks and colors and re-registering the sheet until the entire image was completed to the artist’s satisfaction
To see the process described above with more intricate detail, watch a video here!
For more information on the history, techniques, processes, as well as more examples of Japanese woodblock printing, please see the following references:
http://woodblock.com/encyclopedia/entries/011_07/011_07.html
http://www.druckstelle.info/en/holzschnitt_japan.aspx
http://viewingjapaneseprints.net/texts/topictexts/faq/faq_making_a_print.html
http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/prints/process.html
MAPS 2017 is Fast Approaching!
The First Showing of MAPS 2017 is Coming Right Up! the Yarmouth Historical Society, which is hosting the exhibit from May 1 to June 1, wrote a little introductory piece about the exhibit on their page to shed some light on what MAPS is all about. Check out their press release by clicking here!
Hope to see you on Thursday, May 11th!
Friends of Aomori 
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