Japan & the Orient AB
October 8th, 2006I have finally managed to get some decent pics of my work in Paula’s book. It feels like I sepnt a lot of time collecting the pieces I wanted to use, and figuring out the best way to use them. Therefore, actually looking at the finished piece of work now, feels like a bit of an anti-climax, because although I think the spread looks good, it doesn’t really express the work that went into it. I started working from the back of the book because books in the orient are written, and read from the (western) back to the front, right to left, and of course top to bottom.
This is the closed spread…
The LHS page is a gorgeous fabric, and the RHS page is two japanese origami dolls on a page of acetate. I believe the dolls are more than twnnty years old, I mounted them on acetate beacuse I wanted the viewer to be able to see the work on the back of each doll. You can see the detail in the folds and the intricate bows that have been made.
The acetate page opens with a page of japanese text behind it. On the re
verse of the fabric page is a collage of Japanese matchbox labels. Some of these are almost comic, whilst others show really delicate art work. The fabric page and the acetate/text pages open out to show a traditional wood-cut print, a beautiful form of Japanese art.
Over the print, I used an extract from a manga comic, to show some contemporary Japanese art. 
To the left of the print I attached a picture of a mushroom, as a reference to the mushroom cloud that accompanies an atomic explosion. The name Enola Gay is written in and around the mushroom; the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.In this spread I wanted to make reference to some of the images that come to mind when I think of Japan. Having never been there, perhaps these images are rather stereotypical. I wanted to draw from the traditional and the contempory, the historical and the present-day. I hope I have managed to accomplish this.
Again, as with my last AB, I wanted my spread to be somehow thought-provoking whilst not being maudlin.
