Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, through my pinhole camera

by aleks

I mean through my strainer/colander - I read one can get the same effect through tree leaves, but I only had a presence of mind to produce the  colander...

Seattle, 8/21/2017 - solar eclipse of 8/21/2017 through my strainer

It got spooky, weird and  dark, as if someone dimmed the sun for a moment, and then it gradually went back to the bright sunshine.  it must be how the nuclear winter might look like..  We had a hummingbird visitor for the moment of the eclipse:

Seattle solar eclipse of 8/21/17 - a hummingbird joins us 

Yayoi Kusama 草間 彌生 or 弥生 Kusama Yayoi at SAM

photos by Tony

SAM • 8/14/17 - Yayoi Kusama in her own words (recorded interview is a part of the exhibition)

Yayoi'Kusama's first stop after leaving Japan was Seattle, where she had a solo show in 1957 at the now-long-gone Zoë Dusanne Gallery, before moving to New York City the following year.

SHE IS BACK!! Or, her art is at SAM till September 10th, 2017 -  the wildly popular exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors has new hours and new tickets available for everyone who wishes to see her artwork - check SAM's website.

If you are interested in buying Kusama's work, or up-to-date exhibition listings you may want to check the  Yayoi Kusama page at Artsy -  their mission is to make all the world’s art accessible to anyone.

SAM • 8/14/17 - they only allow 3 people into each mirrored room: as you see - reflected indefinitely 

From Wikipedia: Yayoi Kusama (草間 彌生 or 弥生 Kusama Yayoi, born March 22, 1929) is a Japanese artist and writer. Throughout her career she has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, soft sculpture, performance art, and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychedelic colors, repetition, and pattern. A precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, Kusama influenced her contemporaries such as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and George Segal and exhibited works alongside the likes of them.

SAM • 8/14/17: a bit like looking inside of a kaleidoscope

From June 29/2017 Review  Seattle Times: '“Infinity Mirrors” surveys the art of Kusama, the 88-year-old Japanese avant-garde artist who has been in and out of the spotlight for over six decades. As the title suggests, and at the request of the artist, the exhibition focuses on Kusama’s mirrored installations, rooms you can enter or peek into, and find yourself be surrounded by giant polka-dot balloons or glowing yellow pumpkins or thousands of reflections of hovering lanterns...[..]

SAM • 8/14/17 - line for seeing inside of polka-dot room

SAM  8/14/17 - Yayoi Kusama, 草間 彌生

SAM  8/14/17 - Yayoi Kusama, 草間 彌生

SAM  8/14/17 - Yayoi Kusama, 草間 彌生 - a room where YOU can add polka dots :)

Wandering and Wondering in pics

text by Joan Laage, photos by aleks

August 6th, 2017 • Peace Park in Seattle - Sadako Sasaki's sculpture is covered with origami cranes,  as always, on Hiroshima's anniversary. Today somebody also fashioned her an origami cranes vest...

Butoh is a contemporary avant-garde dance form which erupted out of the turmoil and loss of identity post WW2 Japan. Hijikata Tatsumi, known as the principal founder, created the first butoh piece in 1959. Butoh combines dance, theater and influences of Japanese traditional performing arts with German Expressionist dance (Neue Tanz) to create a unique performing art that is both controversial and universal in its expression. Butoh has evolved to become an international art form with artists and groups devoted to teaching and performing it throughout the world.

SJG • 8/3/17 - Katrina Wolfe, Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle

SJG • 8/3/17 - Bruce Fogg, Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle

SJG • 8/3/17 - Erica Howard, Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle

SJG • 8/3/17 - Joan Laage, Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle

SJG • 8/3/17 - Shoko Zama, Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle

SJG • 8/3/17 - Musicians: Christopher Hydinger, Michael Shannon, David Stanford, Carl Lierman; Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle

SJG • 8/3/17 - Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle

SJG • 8/3/17 - Erica Howard & Douglas Ridings, Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle

SJG • 8/3/17 - Wandering and Wondering event by Daipan butoh collective in Seattle
One young lady lost her slipper in the pond...  Our event coordinator, Chie Iida, bravely went to the rescue with a fish net 

Wandering and Wondering - Thursday, August 3rd, 4-7 pm

PRESS RELEASE
July 28, 2017
Kill Date: August 3, 2017

Something different for 1st Thursday…

Photo by Aurora Santiago

On August 3 Joan Laage will direct the 7th annual site-specific event Wandering and Wondering at the Seattle Japanese Garden. This year’s W&W is a free 1st Thursday event from 4-7 pm. The Seattle Japanese Garden is located at 1075 Lake Washington Blvd E. Wander through the garden and wonder at the sights, sounds, and spirits emerging from the landscape.  Experience the beauty and tranquility of the garden in a unique way.

Over a three-hour period, visitors to the garden will encounter dancers and musicians dispersed in surprising locations throughout the garden as the performers engage in a minute-by-minute response to all the scents, sounds, sights and sensations of the garden. Visitors can also enjoy a photo exhibit featuring W&W from its beginning in 2011. The event’s director Joan Laage (Kogut Butoh) is pleased to present Wandering & Wondering, an annual event in both the Seattle Japanese Garden and Kubota Garden, and for the first time in the Bellevue Botanical Garden.

This year’s dancers are Bruce Fogg, Douglas Ridings, Joan Laage, Katrina Wolfe, Erica Howard, Helen Thorsen, Shoko Zama and Consuelo Gonzalez with music by Gyre (Michael Shannon, David Stanford and Carl Lierman) and Christopher Hydinger. Wandering & Wondering 2017 is co-presented by the Seattle Japanese Garden, Kogut Butoh and DAIPANbutoh Collective, and sponsored by Seattle’s Best Smiles located in Madison Park.

Here’s an audience comments from our 2011 performance:
Thank you for the beautiful afternoon at the Japanese Garden on Saturday. The musicians and dancers were exquisitely sensitive to the beauty of the garden. An added bonus was the great blue heron who seemed to be joining his gestures to the dance. I sincerely hope this event will be continued next year, and every year after. We and the world need more beauty like this. Thank you to all who made this possible.

Our granddaughters

by aleks

Sophie and Ellie, docent Lynnda L.'s and my granddaughters, meet every summer  in the Seattle Japanese garden - we created a tradition for the girls to visit each other while exploring the garden.  This year Lynnda created a book for Sophie, memorizing several years of those visits -  the girls looked at the book while having an after tour snack.

SJG • 7/5/17 -Sophie, her little brother Nick and Ellie feed the koi

SJG • 7/5/17 -Ellie reading Sophie's book about their Garden visits

SJG • 7/5/17 - the annual 'bridge' picture - this year fantastically bombed by our  Master Gardener, Pete Putnicki :)

For the Lynnda's entire adorable book for Sophie go here (sorry, some pages copied upside down - don't know how to fix it, but you can still read them!)

P.S. I'll post links to posts about their previous Garden visits later tonight.

July 5th, noon: BOOK CLUB: Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata

by aleks

SJG - 5/31/17 - Miriam, our Gardener, sheering the azaleas

Our Book Club meets this Wednesday at noon at TCR to discuss ''Thousand Cranes' (千羽鶴 Senbazuru, 1952), by Nobel Prize laureate Yasunari Kawabata and translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.

From wikipedia: [...] Set in a post World War II Japan, the protagonist, Kikuji, has been orphaned by the death of his mother and father. He becomes involved with one of the former mistresses of his father, Mrs. Ota, who commits suicide seemingly for the shame she associates with the affair. After Mrs. Ota's death, Kikuji then transfers much of his love and grief over Mrs Ota's death to her daughter, Fumiko. [...]

I agree with this thought from a review posted on 'Japanese Literature Book Group': [...] The novels by Kawabata, more than any of the other Japanese classics I’ve read, really make me regret the fact that I can’t read in Japanese. His writing is just so sparse and poetic. Although the translation does a good job at trying to portray the artistry behind the words, it simply must be more beautiful and meaningful in the original Japanese. I’ve heard Kawabata’s writing described as brush strokes, like writing haiku in traditional Japanese calligraphy, and I think that is a very apt description. [...]

Here a picture and about Shino ware (water jar), featured in the book...

From M.A.Orthofer, 20 January 2013 Review of the book: [...] An effective story of deep emotion and suffocatingly binding personal ties (that still exert a hold even after death), Thousand Cranes is uncomfortably but powerfully understated -- with the slightly stilted feel of the translation working quite well as well here. Presented like the smooth surface of a body of water, the roiling underneath is suggested but barely shown, leaving much for the reader to read into the text, as Kawabata presents a surprisingly deep, layered, and disturbing story in such a short space and with such simple brushstrokes. [...]

As much as I enjoyed the book and particularly the topic of Japan in 1950s being a transient state between cultural practices of the past and beginning to adopt western cultural and social customs, the words from the above review by Orthofer struck me as reflecting my own reading experience of this masterpiece: suffocating, uncomfortable and disturbing - but obviously that was the author's intent, so not unhappy about getting into his head for this reading journey :)...

If you are an over-thinker, and like to analyze everything in depth, this Eslkevin's Blog post titled 'THOUSAND CRANES, BEAUTY, WAR, WARES and SUICIDES' will be really up your ally - i know I appreciated every thought in it.  {About eslkevin: I am a peace educator who has taken time to teach and work in countries such as the USA, Germany, Japan, Nicaragua, Mexico, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman over the past 4 decades.}.

So, book lovers: see you Wednesday at noon at TCR!

SJG - 5/31/17 - blooming irises