Showing posts with label tokyo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tokyo. Show all posts

Friday, December 15, 2023

Christmas With the Colonel by Yukari Sakamoto




 







Saturday, December 31, 2022

Happy New Year! On to 2023

 


Gregg Chadwick
30"x 40" oil on linen 

Happy New Year!
明けましておめでとうございます
Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu


In my painting "New York Stories" it’s five minutes to midnight. Waiting for 2022 to move into 2023 like the hands of a clock spinning into the next hour, figures move around the iconic Grand Central clock like foxes huddling beneath a tree in Andō Hiroshige's "New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji"

It’s raining this New Year’s Eve in Santa Monica. I’m listening to a recording of a 10,000-member choir in Japan singing “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Enthusiasm for Beethoven is particularly strong in Japan. Every year in December, singers gather in a concert hall in Osaka to sing the final chorus from Beethoven's Ninth.



Gregg Chadwick
Passing View of Shohei Bridge 
30"x24" oil on linen 1990



Again, my thoughts trace a circuit from this moment back to an earlier New Year in Japan as 1989 rolled into 1990. I was in Tokyo following the spirit and artworks of Ando Hiroshige. That winter in Japan, I clutched a large volume by Henry D. Smith II and Amy G. Poster on Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and trekked on rail, foot and car across the historic core of what was Edo era Tokyo. Sponsored by the Nippon Seiyu-Kai's 30th Anniversary Award, I endeavored to create a series of new paintings inspired by Hiroshige’s woodcuts. Time, place, memory, mystery and lore all mixed in my artworks.


Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando) (Japanese, 1797-1858)
 New Year’s Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Oji
( No. 118 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo)
 9th month of 1857  Woodblock print
 Brooklyn Museum


Today @nortonsimon posted a photo of one of the most mysterious images from Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Alison Baldassano from the Brooklyn Museum wrote about this artwork, "People aren’t the only beings who gather together for special celebrations on the night before a new year dawns. In this woodblock print by Hiroshige, foxes come together on New Year’s Eve to receive directions for the upcoming year and emit ghostly flames, the size of which helps predict the next year’s crop…. And, as the foxes could say in the morning, 明けましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu) or #HappyNewYear!"


#art #NewYear #NYC #japan

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Japanese Pumpkin Monster for Halloween

Halloween is coming up soon, so this year  the Ota Memorial Museum of Art shows us the Edo period version of the Jack-O-Lantern. It is a pumpkin monster called "Sunamura no Onryo" drawn by Yoshikazu Utagawa. Sunamura is present-day Koto Ward in Tokyo. It was known for producing pumpkins. The limbs are made of leaves and vines. 




Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Season's Greetings!

Loved this card from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Reminds me of the many holiday seasons that I have spent in Japan.
Especially the year that I spent chasing Hiroshige in Tokyo.  

Sunday, April 09, 2017

Gregg Chadwick: Revenant by Jeffrey Carlson - July 2014




Gregg Chadwick's "Revenant"
Jeffrey Carlson Reporting Editor, Fine Art Today 

Specters from a distant past ‐‐ or perhaps another level of existence ‐‐ people the nostalgic and visionary works of Gregg Chadwick.

Widely recognized for his figure paintings and cityscapes, Gregg Chadwick presents his latest work in an exhibition titled "Revenant," soon to be unveiled at San Francisco's Sandra Lee Gallery. The exhibition opens July 1, and the opening reception will be held July 10, from 5:30‐7:30 p.m.



Gregg Chadwick, "Salish Sea," 2014, oil on linen, 30 x 24 in.
Sandra Lee Gallery
In viewing Chadwick's paintings, it feels as though we are viewing these people and places through a screen of nostalgic vision. In passages the works are blurred and vague, suggesting forms more than representing them. This lack of definition suggests the uncertainty and vagueness of a lost memory or a fleeting dream; we can picture its shape but are often left grasping at its details.



Gregg Chadwick, "Calle," 2014, oil on linen, 24 x 18 in. 
Sandra Lee Gallery 


Gregg Chadwick, "Revenant," 2014, oil on linen, 24 x 18 in.
Sandra Lee Gallery


Chadwick's process, too, encourages reflection on the simultaneously fleeting and lasting nature of life's experiences. In each painting Chadwick creates a kind of palimpsest, layering transparent pigments and painting over the earlier image. In this way the past is built into the paintings themselves.




Gregg Chadwick, "The Station Agent," 2014, oil on linen, 40 x 40 in.
Sandra Lee Gallery
 





Gregg Chadwick, "Deerhead Diner," 2014, oil on linen, 24 x 36 in.
Sandra Lee Gallery
  

"Revenant" will remain on display at Sandra Lee Gallery through July 31, where a concurrent exhibition at Sandra Lee Gallery presents paintings by Evri Kwong. To learn more, visit Sandra Lee Gallery online.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e‐newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.




Gregg Chadwick, "Mulholland Blue," 2014, oil on linen, 24 x 30 in.
Sandra Lee Gallery


 


Gregg Chadwick and Painting Time by Jeffrey Carlson - March 2013



Gregg Chadwick and Painting Time

Jeffrey Carlson Reporting Contributing Editor, Fine Art Today
March 2013

In a new solo exhibition, California artist Gregg Chadwick ambitiously explores the boundaries of time and of representational painting. 




Gregg Chadwick, "Grand Central," oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.



  

Gregg Chadwick, “Il Poeta di Milano,” oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in.


The Time Between, a show of recent paintings by Gregg Chadwick, is now on view at Sandra Lee Gallery in San Francisco.

In these paintings Chadwick works lightly and suggestively, as if in the haze of a fragmented vision. Some figures are located in recognizable time and space, like three young women who stroll an open road, one texting and another snooping. In other works the subject is far more enigmatic, the spaces indeterminate, and the figures distorted or mirrored.
The conceptual foundation for Chadwick’s recent work comes from a study of time as perceived by the ancient Greeks, who categorized it in two distinct ways. Chronos denoted sequential time, measurable in units, whereas kairos conveyed the significance of a moment and was qualitative in nature. A kairos was indeterminate in length and potentially great in importance, as in “an appointed time.”
Chadwick’s stated intention with his works on time is to “break down the illusions of linear time passing and expose the coexistence of past, present and future.”



Gregg Chadwick, “I Canti (The Cantos),” oil on linen, 80 x 60 in. 


Gregg Chadwick, “The Time Between,” oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in.

The artist’s conceptual vision neatly dovetails with the goals of the broader contemporary realist art movement. Chadwick paints scenes that are representational yet imaginative; they are, at one and the same time, rooted in tangible existence and removed from it. His figures are real and unreal. Engaged in everyday activities or detached from their surroundings, we see them as women and men of the world and as specters of superhuman existence.





Gregg Chadwick, “Three Secrets,” oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in.


Based in Santa Monica, where he paints in an old airplane hangar, Chadwick has shown at galleries and museums nationally and internationally. He earned his BFA from UCLA and his MFA from NYU. Chadwick has held notable solo exhibitions at the Manifesta Maastricht Gallery (Maastricht, Netherlands), AD Space 2000 (Tokyo, Japan), and the Lisa Coscino Gallery (Pacific Grove, California), and he has participated in group shows at the Sandra Lee Gallery, Arena 1 Gallery (Santa Monica, California), and the Arts Club of Washington (Washington, D.C.).

Chadwick writes a blog, Speed of Life, in which he examines art’s intersection with society. He also frequently posts recently completed work to his Flickr account, which can be viewed here.

The Time Between will be on view through March 30, 2013. 
An opening reception will be held the evening of March 7, from 5:30‐7:30 p.m. Sandra Lee Gallery is located at 251 Post Street, Suite 310, in San Francisco.

For more information, visit www.greggchadwick.com and http://sandraleegallery.com. 

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a new weekly e‐newsletter from Fine Art
Connoisseur magazine.

Filed Under :

Locations : California, Milano, Monica, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Tokyo, Washington, D.c. People : Gregg Chadwick, Painting Time




Gregg Chadwick, “Proserpina,” oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in.

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Happy New Year 2017 and Some of the Best Things that Happened in 2016

by Gregg Chadwick

Happy New Year 2017!

It’s raining this New Year’s Eve in Santa Monica. The haunting voice of Gil Scott-Heron singing Winter In America fills our living room. My thoughts trace a circuit from this moment back to an earlier New Year in Japan as 1989 rolled into 1990. I was in Tokyo following the spirit and artworks of Ando Hiroshige. That winter in Japan, I clutched a large volume by Henry D. Smith II and Amy G. Poster on Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and trekked on rail, foot and car across the historic core of what was Edo era Tokyo. Sponsored by the Nippon Seiyu-Kai's 30th Anniversary Award, I endeavored to create a series of new paintings inspired by Hiroshige’s woodcuts. Time, place, memory, mystery and lore all mixed in my artworks.



Gregg Chadwick
Passing View of Shohei Bridge 
30"x24" oil on linen 1990

 Today, on the Brooklyn museum’s Tumblr page, Alison Baldassano posted a photo of one of the most mysterious images from Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. She wrote,"People aren’t the only beings who gather together for special celebrations on the night before a new year dawns. In this woodblock print by Hiroshige, foxes come together on New Year’s Eve to receive directions for the upcoming year and emit ghostly flames, the size of which helps predict the next year’s crop…. And, as the foxes could say in the morning, 明けましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu) or Happy New Year!"




Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando) (Japanese, 1797-1858)
 New Year’s Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Oji
( No. 118 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo)
 9th month of 1857  Woodblock print
 Brooklyn Museum

And some of the best things that happened in 2016!
(Please scroll to the end for all 51)

Thinking about the past year and inspired by a series of tweets by Canadian Astronaut Commander Hadfield, who is back on Earth after living aboard ISS as Commander of Expedition 35 , I have put together a list of positive achievements from 2016. Yes, it has been a difficult year with the Trumpian circus and the deaths of far too many in Aleppo, Iraq, Turkey, Nice, and Berlin. Not to mention, the untimely passing of artists from David Bowie, to Prince, to Carrie Fisher and so many more. 

1. It’s easy to forget that this year saw a great many positive accomplishments. Let’s take a look: 

2. The Colombian government and FARC rebels committed to a lasting peace, ending a war that killed or displaced over 7 million people.

3. Sri Lanka spent five years working to exile the world’s deadliest disease from their borders. As of 2016, they are malaria free.

4. The Giant Panda, arguably the world’s cutest panda, has officially been removed from the endangered species list.



5. @astro_timpeake became the first ESA astronaut from the UK, symbolizing a renewed British commitment to space exploration.

6. Tiger numbers around the world are on the rise for the first time in 100 years, with plans to double by 2022.


7. Juno, a piece of future history, successfully flew over 588 million miles and is now sending back unprecedented data from Jupiter.

8. The number of veterans in the US who are homeless has halved in the past half-decade, with a nearly 20% drop in 2016.
Thank you Michelle Obama and so many more!



Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Howell, 8th Theater Sustainment Command public affairs operations noncommissioned officer, talks with a homeless veteran ahead of the annual Veterans Stand-Down in Honolulu, Aug. 5, 2015. 
The stand-down was part of the Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness initiative announced by First Lady Michelle Obama as a way to challenge the mayors in major cities to provide services and supplies to homeless veterans such as food, shelter, clothing, medical, dental and benefits counseling with the hope of getting them off the streets. Courtesy photo


9. Malawi lowered its HIV rate by 67%, and in the past decade have seen a shift in public health that has saved over 250,000 lives.

10. Air travel continue to get safer, and 2016 saw the second fewest per capita deaths in aviation of any year on record.

11. India’s dogged commitment to reforestation saw a single day event planting more than 50 million trees, a world record.



Hundreds of thousands of people in India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh planted 50 million trees in 24 hours. 
(AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

12. Measles has been eradicated from the Americas. A 22 year vaccination campaign has led to the elimination of the historic virus.

13. After a century, Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves has been found verifiable, in a ‘moon shot’ scientific achievement.

14. China has announced a firm date for the end of the ivory trade, as public opinion is becoming more staunchly environmentalist.

15. A solar powered airplane flew across the Pacific Ocean for the first time, highlighting a new era of energy possibilities.




16. Costa Rica’s entire electrical grid ran on renewable energy for over half the year, and their capacity continues to grow.

17. Israeli and US researchers believe they are on the brink of being able to cure radiation sickness, after successful tests this year.

18. The ozone layer has shown that through tackling a problem head on, the world can stem environmental disasters, together.

19. A new treatment for melanoma has seen a 40% survival rate, taking a huge step forward towards long-term cancer survivability.

20. An Ebola vaccine was developed by Canadian researchers with 100% efficacy. Humans eradicated horror, together.

21. British Columbia protected 85% of the world’s largest temperate rainforest, in a landmark environmental agreement.



Spirit bears are the best known part of the unique flora and fauna of the Great Bear Rainforest that will be protected under an agreement finalized in B.C. 
Spirit bears, also known as Kermode bears, are black bears with a unique genetic variation that gives them their cream-coloured fur. (Photo by Ian McAllister)

22. 2016 saw the designation of more than 40 new marine sanctuaries in 20 countries, covering an area larger than the United States.

23. These marine reserves include Malaysia’s 13 year struggle to complete a million hectare park, completed this year.

24. This also includes the largest marine reserve in history, created in Antarctica via an unprecedented agreement by 24 nations.

25. Atmospheric acid pollution, once a gloomy reality, has been tackled to the point of being almost back to pre-industrial levels.

26. Major diseases are in decline. The US saw a 50% mortality drop in colon cancer; lower heart disease, osteoporosis and dementia.

27. Uruguay won a major case against Philip Morris in a World Bank ruling, setting a precedent for other small countries that want to deter tobacco use.

28. World hunger has reached its lowest point in 25 years, and with poverty levels dropping worldwide, seems likely to continue.

29. The A.U. made strides to become more unified, launching an all-Africa passport meant to allow for visa-free travel for all citizens.

30. Fossil fuel emissions flatlined in 2016, with the Paris agreement becoming the fastest UN treaty to become international law.

31. One third of Dutch prison cells are empty as the crime rate shrank by more than 25% in the last eight years, continuing to drop.

32. Homelessness in the United States declined by 35% since 2007, and Los Angeles committed to $1.2 billion to help get more people off the street. Amanda Hoover in the Christian Science Monitor writes,"The decreases nationwide, especially those involving chronic homelessness, come in part thanks to a push for permanent housing options rather than temporary placements that are no longer seen as a good path to getting people 'back on their feet.' Communities, such as Boston, that have explored supportive, long-term options have seen more of their vulnerable citizens thrive, and some say an expansion of that plan could eradicate the issue of homelessness entirely."

33. @BoyanSlat successfully tested his Ocean Cleanup prototype, and aims to clean up to 40% of ocean-borne plastics starting this year.

34. Israel now produces 55% of its freshwater, turning what is one of the driest countries on earth into an agricultural heartland.

35. The Italian government made it harder to waste food, creating laws that provided impetus to collect, share and donate excess meals.

36. People pouring ice on their head amusingly provided the ALS foundation with enough funding to isolate a genetic cause of the disease in 2016.

37. Manatees, arguably the most enjoyable animal to meet when swimming, are increasing their population.

38. The United States now feeds healthy lunches to more than 30 million children, is about to ban trans fats, and has enacted one of the biggest overhauls of nutrition labels in decades.

39. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau announces ban on transgender discrimination

40. In December, Gambia became the latest African country to show that voting does count, and dictators do fall. 

41. The Gates Foundation announced another 5 billion dollars towards eradicating poverty and disease in Africa.

42. Individual Canadians were so welcoming that the country set a world standard for how to privately sponsor and resettle refugees.

43. Teenage birth rates in the United States have never been lower, while at the same time graduation rates have never been higher.

44. In 2012, the US and Mexico embarked on an unprecedented binational project to revive the Colorado River. By 2016, the results had astonished everyone. 

45. SpaceX made history by landing a rocket upright after returning from space, potentially opening a new era of space exploration.

46. Black incarceration rates fell in the United States. Not fast enough, but certainly something worth celebrating. 

47. The proportion of older US adults with dementia, including Alzheimer’s, declined from 11.6% in 2000 to 8.8% in 2012, a decrease of about a million people.

48. Mobile phones made significant inroads in the fight against rabies, a disease that kills more people annually than all terrorists combined.

49. In November, the Obama administration followed up its March announcements by banning offshore exploration and drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic until 2022. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/5-year-drilling-plan-arctic-waters-obama-231615

50. The World Health Organisation released a report showing that, since the year 2000, global malaria deaths have declined by 60%. 


51. Katherine Johnson, 98, was able to see her life's work as a mathematician realized, recognized, and appreciated.  #STEMwomen



There are countless more examples, large and small. If we refocus on the things that are working, our new year will be better than the last.

Thinking of all of you this holiday season! 

We remain hopeful in this dark moment and send healing thoughts your way.

Thank you for your love and support!

Gregg



This is an update from an earlier letter. I will be sending these out as the situation develops.
It is my goal in these updates to point out the injustice our country faces and actions we can take to find peace and overcome this tide of hate coming from DJT supporters and DJT ideas and policies.
I have posted the content of my first letter without personal details on my blog Speed of Life -