January 21~27, 2007
Eighteenth Annual Exhibition
(Tokyo Kotsu Kaikan, Yurakucho Tokyo)
This exhibition was held in the same place as usual, the Kotsu Kaikan building in the heart of the Yurakucho district of Tokyo.
You can see a small movie 'tour' of the exhibition here. (12Mb)
Here is a sequence of photo screen shots that follows pretty much the same walk-around pattern as that little movie. We'll start the tour with the view from out in the shopping mall, walking towards the 'Gold Salon', our gallery:
Once inside the room, if you look to the right, you can see that the entire wall is taken up by a single display ... of course this year's new scroll print:
Zooming in a bit ...
Quite a few people have a bit of trouble spending more than a few seconds in front of a single print, so to give them a bit more to 'hold onto', I prepared a set of panels containing a basic description of the process of making this print:
A second copy of the print is also there on the table; it is mounted with a different colour silk, and this gives quite a different impression of the image.
In the centre of this front room is our 'TV Tower' ... a random selection of still clips from programs I have been on in recent years. Behind it on the wall you can see the display of recent newspaper and magazine stories ...
On the wall opposite the scroll is the display of the 'Small Print Collection', the set of ten prints I made last year using the images I used for New Year card prints many years ago:
As always, they are mounted without frames or glass - they don't stay very flat, but they certainly look 'real'!
We now stroll through into the back room. Over on the right wall is a selection of prints from the long Hyakunin Isshu series I completed years ago.
Because there is no space to display all 100, I made a nice glossy poster showing thumbnail images of the entire set ... they look great!
Over on the opposite wall, it's kind of a 'catch-all' of other prints ...
These are the prints of the 'Hanga Treasure Chest' ...
Next to them is a selection from my Surimono Albums, with another beautiful poster ...
And beside them are a couple of the 'Beauties of Four Seasons' prints ...
I saved a small corner of the room to promote my 'A Story A Week' program - now in its second year.
The program is designed for people to read the stories on-line, but I decided to produce printed volumes of the stories as well, and they have been selling nicely ...
Another corner contains the explanation of my upcoming series - 'My Solitudes'.
There is nothing much to show yet, as I of course haven't begun work on the series. It is outlined in a recent edition of my newsletter.
The back end of the display space is taken up by the coffee corner, and the Mokuhankan shop.
All of the six Mokuhankan prints produced last year are on sale here, along with packed sets of my other print series'.
As Mokuhankan is still new to most visitors - hardly a household brand yet - there is a panel explaining the concept, and introducing some of the people working together with me.
And - coming in just under the wire, being finished up on the Saturday morning less than 24 hours before we opened - here is the Hokkei 'Dragon in Clouds' print.
The best-seller in the shop was - no surprise - the colouring book that was published last year that uses images from the Hyakunin Isshu series ...
When we turn around ... we can see back up the long room towards the front door ...
Thank you for taking this 'virtual' tour of the exhibition. I wish you could come and see it for 'real' sometime!