slate.DESIGN

Ceramic Tiles by Grespania

• Another Shade of Grey blog post

Wall Decor

Kenneth Wingard: Eclipse Mob-bi-le-o ~ $79

Wall Decals

Mar Mar Co.

• Catalog of Wall Decals

Apple Pie Designs

StickyUps: Blossom Wall Stickers (12 stickers available in chestnut brown, beige & purple) ~ 29.99 pounds per pack

Large Blik Eames Circles by Charles & Ray Eames from Via Alley (10 decals - 15" diameter circles - available in red, grey, black, & white) ~ $70 AUD

Blik Decals: Fly

• Blik Decals

Domestic from France

One Up Wall Graphics: Mod Pods

Beearo - wood veneer decals

Other Decal Sources

• ApartmentTherapy: Top Ten Wall Decals
• little slate: wall decals for kid rooms post
• Les Louisettes
• Wonderful Graffiti / Apartment Therapy post
• Wonderful Graffiti Wedding
• Stickers by Dvider
• Pop Cling

Wayne Payte

GoodShapeDesign: $30 - 18" x 24" Flock poster

Design*Sponge: Sneak Peek ... Our House (3/21/07) - featuring the posters

Simon Bull

• "Across the Universe"
• "Almond Rain"
• "Early in the Season"
• "Breeze"

• "Diamonds & Pearls"
• "Morning Star"

• "Hope"
• "Joy"

• "In the Beginning"
• "Forest Green"

• "Presence"
• "Glory"

Simon Bull's Official Website - http://www.bullart.com/

Kawase Hasui

Kawase Who? My guess is most of you have not heard of him, but he is my all-time favorite woodblock artist, even ahead of Ando Hiroshige (aka Utagawa Hiroshige) and Katsushika Hokusai, perhaps the two most well-known Japanese woodblock artists of all-time. Both Hiroshige and Hokusai have influenced the western Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. I have bought tickets months in advance and have driven from NYC to DC just to see exhibits of Hiroshige's work. I own two posters of his famous prints and a reprint of his collection titled One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Nonetheless, as much as I admire Hiroshige's work, Kawase Hasui tops my list. I would even put him ahead of Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Rembrandt, and many of my friends know how much I love those painters. I first discovered Hasui's prints when I visited Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in the late 1990's. I still hold dear an old 1999 calendar and a series of greeting cards of his artwork. For years, I was only able to enjoy his artistry through websites I found on-line. Then in the summer of 2003, I happened to stumble upon a small 30-print exhibit of Hasui's early work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts(LACMA). Up until that time, I had never seen Hasui's prints in person, so it was such an amazing experience for me, and a definite highlight of my trip.

If that weren't enough, after learning how much I loved Hasui's work, my husband (then boyfriend) surprised me a month later with the newly released slipcased collection of Hasui's woodblock prints.  I had been looking online for years for a book on Kawase Hasui without luck. Then in May 2003, finally this was released. What perfect timing! For our first Valentine's Day, my husband (then boyfriend) surprised me once again with an actual Hasui woodblock print. I was speechless. Still am.

In Japanese, woodblock prints are called hanga; han means 'a printing block', and ga is 'picture'. The technique for making woodblock prints is a complicated one, which is why I so admire this medium. The artist (whose name goes on the prints) creates at least one copy of the art work. Then the engravers carve the printing boards -- one for each color to be used! (can you believe that?) -- thereby destroying the original art in the process. Then the printers hand print copy after copy, daubing each board with its particular color in just the right places, then aligning the page perfectly so the different colors all fit together. It is a painstaking process in which in my opinion, the engravers and printers don't get the full recognition they also deserve. After all it's their talents that contribute as much to the final piece as the artistic vision of the original artist.

Anyway, shin hanga literally means "new prints" and is the art movement that Kawase Hasui was part of where a contemporary sense of aesthetics and western elements of expressions of light and mood were integrated with old values and traditional Japanese woodblock print-making techniques from the old masters of the Edo Period. This new style created a whole series of prints from about 1910-1960. A publisher named Watanabe Shozaburo commissioned these prints from several artists, including Hasui, and who became a master of landscape prints. Between 1918-1923, Hasui had produced more than a hundred prints, but then on September 1, 1923, the great Kanto earthquake struck Tokyo, destroying all of Hasui's print blocks. Hence prints pre-1923 are rare and very valuable. In fact, that made the exhibit I saw in L.A. that much more special since all the prints displayed were made before the earthquake. A year before he died, at age 73 in 1956, Kawase Hasui was declared a Living National Treasure by the Japanese government, the first person to receive such an honor.

It is impossible for me to choose a favorite Hasui print, but I have included a couple examples of his work in this entry to show the artist's amazing ability to depict the changing seasons, weather, and times of the day; portray the beautiful landscape of Japan; and capture tranquil moments in time. I hope to one day visit Japan, but my big fear is that the "Japan" I see in these prints will not be the same "Japan" I would actually see on a visit there. However, LuvsNY made me feel better recently when she told me that in many places in Japan, the traditional scenes and landscapes captured by Kawase Hasui in his woodblock prints, especially those of Miyajima, can still be found today. That got me all excited.

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For those interested in learning more about Kawase Hasui and seeing some of his beautiful prints, check out these websites below:

• LACMA's on-line collection (Search under "Hasui")
• Comparisons between Hasui's watercolors and prints
• Brief bio with great links to his prints (also where I got the pictures from)
• Another good brief bio on Kawase Hasui
• Viewing Japanese Prints bio on Hasui
• Side-by-side look at the same print in daytime and nighttime views
• Brief Online Tour of Japanese Art Collection at LACMA

 

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HANGA IN MENDOCINO

While in Mendocino, I wandered into Zacha's Bay Window Gallery where I found hanga prints by another one of Japan's national treasures, Toshi Yoshida. To see examples of his woodblock prints, click here:  (1) (2). He once taught classes at the Mendocino Art Center founded by the owner of the gallery, William Zacha, an artist of his own right.

I spoke briefly to his daughter Lucia Zacha, who took over his gallery after he passed away in 1998. Evidently, her father has quite a legacy in Mendocino. Much credit is given to him for reviving the town and establishing it as one of the best-known artist enclaves in northern California. This article describes Bill Zacha's love and commitment to Mendocino. These two links provide thumbnails of Zacha's serigraphs: (1) (2). The latter link contains prints he made from a trip to Japan in 1964 to walk upon the ancient Tokaido road, a popular site for many 19th century woodblock artists, including Hiroshige whom I mentioned much earlier in this blog entry. Wow. That would be such a dream of mine. To visit these beautiful places in Japan and paint a collection of small watercolor skteches of each stop. Sigh.