Japan: Design Festa Fall 2013, part one

What do you get when you combine some of Asia's most creative artistic minds together twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight? You get a wildly inventive, incredibly diverse array of outstanding talents and creations mingling together, sharing their crafts and selling their wares as part of the ongoing Design Festa Series! As mentioned above, it's a twice-annual festival, occurring in the spring and again in the fall, allowing artisans from across the land (along with nearby countries) to come and share their passion with each other. Meet and greet many of the creative minds themselves, live and in the flesh! Most of who and what I encountered during my visit to the Fall Design Festa of 2013 was thoroughly awe-inspiring, for the precision and sheer imagination or dedication that went into it, while sometimes it was more confounding or awkward, like school girls with fabulously voluminous hair getting railed by a faceless man who appears to be wearing a device intended to, I think, uhh, collect her fluids? 

Huh. But hey, just because it might not necessarily be my cup of tea doesn't mean it isn't a well-crafted piece of art that will titillate someone else! 

But anyway, here are some sweet elephants, in case you're feeling a little disturbed by the blatant hentai above. Remember, though, that these pieces were all publicly displayed for all to see inside of Tokyo Big Sight, so the artist wasn't trying to hide their creation from curious eyes. In fact, completely the opposite! This event is all about getting your work seen and sharing it with others. One of the coolest things about Design Festa is that it's not limited to one particular type of artistry- if you're into cosplay, there were many people milling about in costumes, from furry to space alien, steampunk pirates to mohawk and studded leather sporting punks. All are welcome, and all art is respected. It's a wild experience, and pretty psychedelic when you stumble down some of the more performance arts-oriented groups laden corridors, but do your best to keep your wits. I know it can be hard with the Japanese rope bondage demonstration in one corner, and the friendly lolitas in the other, but there's a lot to see here!

Given just how much there actually is to see here, I've broken this post into several different posts, and it's still pretty photo heavy. I didn't want to exclude any of it, though, because it's all so fabulous!

I hope you enjoy~

Art: First batch of acrylic pour paintings finished

The first batch of paintings we made have sufficiently dried down enough to get clear coated! It can take awhile for all the paint and liquid on the canvas to fully settle down and solidify, so we let them rest after being made for at least 24 hours, if not longer when possible. Once we felt confident that they were sufficiently solid we took them outside and gave them generous coats of glossy top coat to protect the paints so the paintings will hold up over time. In person they look absolutely fantastic! The clear coat gives added luminousity and lustre to the colors underneath, making them bright and pearlescent... of course, this makes it harder to photograph them because the same gloss that makes them so lovely to look at refracts the light with a fervor that the lens eats up. Flash drowns it out, and the lighting in our studio tends to cast shadows... trying to capture these photos was a tightrope dance of trying to balance reflective shine against shadow. I don't think I completely nailed it, so the actual shop product photos for when these go live will likely be done differently. To be fair, I did this on my own, and Antho is really the skilled light-tech in the relationship. I can point and snap photos but his years working in his high school theater as a technician really helped him learn lighting in technical ways I'm not yet proficient in. I make do with what I've got, though, and tutorials and things have been of exceptionally great use. I swear, there's a youtube tutorial for everything!    

I didn't consider the paintings full complete until after they've dried and been coated, as I wouldn't consider them sellable prior to that. The paints can settle and new aspects revealed, too, during the drying process so there's still more to discover after you've set the painting down post-pour. I have to say that I think these turned out pretty darn nice for being our very first try at this technique. Responses on Instagram have been positive, too, so we're excited to be delving deeper into this! Similar to tie-dye, they always come out so completely different. We used the same 8-10 colors for all of these paintings but the ratios and spread made each painting completely it's own. Pretty groovy. They also react pretty well to changing light colors, as Antho cycled our light through the color spectrum and each shade would make different portions pop out at us. 

Pretty groovy, man.

More photos below!