In my last week, our shows and artist talks were scheduled to take place on Wednesday, June 26th from 2-6pm. I was completely studio-focused in the days leading up to the reception, and I managed to get six paintings up for display; however, the sixth one wasn’t quite finished yet so I planned to continue to work on it at home. I’m pretty pleased with this amount of production in a four-week residency, though I definitely bolstered it by coming a week in advance to get over my jet lag while purchasing art materials and gathering reference experiences and imagery!
We had already packed up everything in the studio aside from the displayed artwork in order to host the reception on the 26th. I was departing on the morning of the 29th for Kyoto, and needed to ship my luggage to Tokyo before that. It seemed silly to me to revive my studio practice given all those details, so after the show ended, I deinstalled my artwork and took it and all my studio materials back to the house.
Then on the 27th, Emily and I visited Arita! Takeo-onsen, the town which hosts the Arts Itoya residency, is located in Saga prefecture in Kyushu (the southwestern Japanese main island). Saga prefecture has three particularly famous porcelain towns: Arita, Imari, and Karatsu, and I wanted to visit at least one of them! In terms of the porcelain produced, I like both Arita and Karatsu in terms of aesthetics (Imari porcelain is a little too ostentatious for my taste). Arita is much closer to Takeo than Karatsu, so it was the better choice for a day trip in terms of both time and cost. We first stopped at their ceramic museum, and then walked to a famous studio called Kouraku Kiln. After that, we walked to the major porcelain shop center Arita Sera and ate lunch. We then visited a LOT of porcelain stores (we probably visited about 50, but I think there might’ve been 100 there). I’ve never seen such a large, single-subject shopping district before and I am pretty confident it’s impossible to take in all at once; there’s too much to look at and our feet were also voicing complaints. There was so much to see that we barely bought anything due to the mental overload, the very real luggage size/weight limitations, difficulties in transporting fragile ceramics, and the fact that we’d already bought some ceramics from a store in Takeo; we stuck to small items only. I bought a gift and four pieces, and Emily bought two gifts and two pieces.
On the 28th, we visited Nagasaki. My former colleague Masa Watanabe had urged me to do so, and Hiro seconded the recommendation. We made our first stop at their prefectural art museum, and then went to lunch before checking out their very small Chinatown and then wrapping up at a Buddhist temple, Fukusaiji. That evening, Hiro helped me ship my two large pieces of luggage to my Tokyo hotel with Yamato Transport. And with that, my last week at the Arts Itoya residency came to a close!
