| A
joint exhibition entitled East Meets West will showcase 120
prints by artists from both Kalamazoo and Tokyo. The exhibit opens
July 9, 2004 and runs through August 31, 2004 at Little Cities Gallery, located at
232 North Kalamazoo Mall.
 This will be the second showing of this
joint international exchange -- the first took place in Tokyo in
September 2003. This two month long exhibition also coincides with
the July 17 – 26 delegation visit from Kalamazoo’s Japanese Sister
City, Numazu. Numazu is a one-hour train ride hour Southwest of
Tokyo.
The East Meets West exhibit will feature woodblock prints made in
the Japanese tradition. In 1998, Kalamazoo artist Mary Brodbeck
studied traditional woodblock printmaking with master Yoshisuke Funasaka
in Tokyo through the auspices of a Japanese BUNCA-CHO Fellowship.
The fellowship was established to enable foreign artists to learn
traditional Japanese arts and to foster knowledge and understanding
between cultures. In this spirit, Ms. Brodbeck and her mentor Mr.
Funasaka are the organizers of this international exchange.
From
the twenty Kalamazoo area participants, many are graduates from the
print department at Western Michigan University. Other community
participants have associations with the print department at the
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts or Kendall College of Art and Design in
Grand Rapids. The forty Japanese participants showcasing their
woodblock prints are all students of Mr. Funasaka’s. Many of
them are also making the trek across the globe to Kalamazoo, to attend
the exhibit’s opening reception held on Friday, July 9, from 5-9pm.
This
exhibition has been funded in part through the Arts Funds Grant
facilitated by the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo. A limited
number of catalogs will be available. For more information, please
call 269-344-6654.
Picture
Description: Woodblock print by Mototsugu Sugiyama, titled Asakusa
Azuma Bridge |