A Lovely Book from Japan

During our PrintWorks show, CCA Print Program featured two other concurrent exhibitions. One was a juried selection of our current students' works (which I hope to get to in another post). One was our biennial exchange with Osaka University of Art. Every other year we choose a select group of prints from CCA and Mikae Hara selects work from her students in Japan. We hang the work in our gallery at CCA, and then the show travels to Osaka to be presented there. Mikae brings many of her students with her, and they are treated to various activities, one of which you will see below.

This year, a lovely book titled Omnibus arrived with a very strong collection of prints from Osaka University of Art. The lithographs in the book were all hand drawn and printed by the student, Misato Kawakishi, who bound it very skillfully and with a clever structure. Students often ask how to attach their artwork to pages, but I had never thought of this solution. It seems a natural offshoot of the shikishi holder, a project included in Painted Paper (p. 136). Misato used strips of paper to hold her prints. The strips were nicely sandwiched inside a folded sheet (the folds at the fore edge and attached to an accordion spine like Flag Book with Folded Pages on p. 75 in Making Handmade Books.) At the fore edge, each strip disappeared into a slit. At the spine, the strips disappeared inside as well.




And that crowning activity? A piƱata!





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