"Attends-moi!" A graphic novel about parenting in French Canada.
All text in Japanese, 6x9 inches, 250 pages, 2023

English will follow. 学校帰りに葉っぱを拾ってきてもらいました。大小様々な形が集まりました。それをスタンプにして、森をイメージした絵を制作。最初は青っぽい緑。その後黄色っぽい緑の二色を使用。みんなの作品をまとめて壁に貼るとステキな明るい空間が出来ました。そこに公園で拾った枝を使ってモビールも飾ります。ぶら下がってるのは、紙の鳥。この世にいない自分だけの鳥をデザインしてもらいました。

The kids picked some leaves on the way to Poncise after school. Many differet shapes of leaves were gathered. They were used as "stamp" to create an imagined forest. Two shades of greens were used, first a deeper green and then a yellowish green. Once all the forest was put together, it brightened up the space. There we hanged a mobile built with the branches collected in a park a few weeks ago and some colored paper birds. Each bird was designed originally by each kid.

English will follow. 公園からの帰り道に雑草探し。なるべくいろんな種類、形や大きさの違うものを探そう、後で切ればよいのでなるべく長く茎の下のほうから取ろう、と伝える。花を生ける瓶から上に出てる草花が、どんな方向でもいいから、三角形の形になるように生けるとバランス良いんだってーと私がネットで検索したときに学んだ浅知恵も伝える。

拾った草花を全部床に広げ、好きな瓶を選んでもらう。

子供達は勢い良くぱぱっと迷わず決める。ステキな生け花になりました。本日の参加者は私も入れて６人でした。

秋になったら今度は秋の草花を使って生け花をしてみてほしいなーと思いました。

One afternoon, we made several stops to pick some weeds and wild flowers on our way back to Poncise (After School Care Program) from a park. I asked the kids to find and pick different kinds of beautiful plants, and to keep the stems long as we could cut them later if needed. I also told them a design trick to make a beautiful ikebana, which I learned by doing a quick internet search,  that is to form a triangular shape with the plants when put in a vase. We placed all the greens on floor. Everyone chose a vase. The kids are quick in making decisions. Everyone made beautiful ikebana. I wished that they would work on another ikebana when the fall arrives with the fall plants.

Books and publication

Download:

Survival Japanese Cooking (2006)

Survival Japanese Cook Book (2008)

Muku & Coro in Rauma, Finland (2012)

“muku & coro” takes place in Rauma, Finland, during a two months artist residency stay hosted by Raumars A-i-R. Rauma is a city of 40,000 people on the west coast of Finland; a 4 hour bus ride from the capital city Helsinki.

Pori newspaper covered the story behind "muku & coro" in Rauma.

Supermarket visits with my tween daughter

[36 pages, 13×20 cm, 2022] written in English and Japanese.

English will follow. ガラスブロックの壁を水槽に見立てて、海の生物を飾ります。ダイソーで売ってるガラス絵の具というものを使いました。鉛筆で描いた下絵をクリアファイルに入れ、上から色塗り。乾燥に１～２日かかりますが、乾燥後は張り替え自由な半透明シールになります。シール同士がくっ付くと離れないのでやっかいです。その点さえ気を付ければ、とても楽しく使える絵の具です。みんなそれぞれ小さい魚を数個、また大きな魚の部分を担当して制作しました。水槽にはまだ魚の入るスペースもありますし、絵の具も残ってます。時間をかけてもう少し増やしてみて下さい。

We decorated the glass brick wall to make a big water tank for sea creatures. We used this cheap and practical paint called "glass paint" sold at Daiso ($1 store) . First we made pencil line drawing. It was placed in a clear plastic file then painted over with the paints. It takes about 1 to 2 days to dry but once it's dry it becomes a translucent sticker.  Everyone made some small fish and also took part in making a big fish.  I wish they will create and add more fish as there are some space left.

Looking for new homes for my works. Please consider adopting one of them, or as many as you like. Pick up only.

$5 / Pay what you can / Free

Some art books and Japanese books to give away

Some frames and table legs for $

Please dress nice as I will take a picture of you and a work that you're taking home with.

A collaboration project with Jenny Lin for Artsouterrain, Nuit Blanche Montréal 2012.

Info on DOLLA-RAMEN.

Commuters rarely pay attention to doors in the metro stations that lead to boiler rooms, storage spaces and offices. These doors, often painted grey or beige, tend to go unnoticed. Closed and locked, we never have the opportunity to find out what lies on the other side. The work calls attention to the otherwise nondescript doorway of a fake restaurant storefront by heightening people’s expectations and catching them by surprise. The artists hope to entice passersby to look for the restaurant and halt in front of the “temporarily closed” sign.

Les usagers du métro ne prêtent jamais attention aux portes qui pourraient mener à une chaufferie, un lieu de stockage ou un bureau. Ces entrées sont fermées et verrouillées, de couleur grise ou beige de façon à ce qu’elles passent généralement inaperçues. De ce fait, nous n’avons jamais la possibilité de savoir ce qui se cache vraiment derrière ces portes. «Maintenant ouvert/Temporai- rement fermé » attire donc l’attention sur une porte en créant un effet de surprise. Les artistes souhaitent que les passants cherchent et s’arrêtent devant ce restaurant «temporairement fermé».

The Survival Japanese Cooking project derives from my art practice in sculpture. Local food and kitchen equipment are used as material to explore the possibility of culinary cultural crossover. The project was executed while staying at RAUMARS A-i-R in Rauma, Finland. The Citymarket is a local store selling everything from groceries to hardwares. It is like Zellars or Wallmart. They publish monthly flyers for groceries on specials along with recipes in using those products in promotion. I happen to notice that in the October issue, two full pages were dedicated to Japanese cooking. I do not read any Finnish so I decided that I asked a Finnish person I got to become friends with to follow these recipes.