eleven days to go...

details of Akuma's gnarly face



details of clouds and Kitsune's paw



clouds complete. now onto those lightning bolts.

Kitsune and Akuma Fight For the Soul of Man

Preliminary photos of my most ambitious linoleum project yet- a 3' x 3' block that will be inked up and run over repeatedly at the upcoming Roadworks Steamroller Prints to benefit the San Francisco Center for the Book on Saturday, September 8th.

The block laying on my living room floor, with the preliminary drawing pencilled in. Not as innocent a process as it looks at first glance. I did the drawing in pencils and inks at 6 x 6 (inches) then scanned it and took it to Kinko's to blow up to the 3 x 3 (feet) dimensions and print out. From their printout, I used carbon paper to retrace the image onto the block. I would have drawn directly onto the block had it not been for two pretty major challenges:

1.) when doing linoleum carvings, everything has to be done in reverse. So what you see now is going to be printed backwards, so its best not to fool with that unless you really know what you're doing.
2.) I've never in my life worked on something of this dimension. Freehand drawing at this scale scared the pants off of me.



Carbon paper works wonders!



Akuma (the demon) is starting to take shape. I've enjoyed adding detail to his face, and will continue to do so with Kitsune (fox).



Its mighty hard to tell from this perspective and at this point in the game, but the finished drawing will reveal the two gods wrestling up in the clouds, while electric lightning bolts whiz from their conjoined fists. Onwards!

two-ton lino: come, I'm one of the artists!

THE SAN FRANCISCO CENTER FOR THE BOOK PRESENTS
THE FOURTH ANNUAL ROADWORKS:
STEAMROLLER PRINTS AND STREET FAIR
Sat, Sept 8, 2007
11 am to 5 pm
De Haro Street (between 16th and 17th Streets)
Free!

Every year, the San Francisco Center for the Book brings local artists and the community together to create unique large linocut prints that are inked and pressed by a two ton steamroller. This unique fundraiser doubles as a rollicking street fair where this year we're featuring an expanded book arts and printers sale, with tables both in the Center for the Book and outside where the printing action takes place. There will also be music, kids activities, tours of the Center for the Book and a chance to pull your own print off the letterpress! The large prints will be auctioned off at our annual Gala Dinner/Fundraiser.

This year watch us pull prints from large-scale linoleum blocks carved especially for the occasion by: Kathy Aoki, East Side Editions, Michael Carabetta, Leif Fairfield, Mary Laird, Paul Madonna, Brandon Mise, Rik Olson, Maia de Raat, Patricia Miye Wakida, and William T. Wiley.

"Little Linos"
Everyone can be a Roadworks artist! The Little Linos print sale will feature 1' x 1' pieces of linoleum carved especially for this year's Roadworks street fair by members of the SFCB community. We'll steamroller print two copies of each block on the morning of the event, one for the artist to keep and one to be sold that day to benefit SFCB. If you're interested in carving a Little Lino, please contact Katherine Case at katherine@sfcb.org to register. Never carved linoleum before? Get a crash course in our Little Linos class taught especially for the occasion by expert wood engraver and four year Roadworks artist Rik Olson on Wednesday September 5.

Also....fabulous SFCB t-shirts for sale, unique book arts vendor sales, kids' activities, and music music music to print to.

I, the Judge

Ok so I hope that I'm not breaking some rule or something by talking about this, and now that I have blogged, I fear that someone will stealthily come at night and beat me with bamboo rods for my "loose lips sink ships" behavior. However, I am truly psyched that I was asked by Quang Bao of the Asian American Writers Workshop in NYC to be one of the judges this year for their annual Asian American Literary Award, in the nonfiction category.

To qualify for this very prestigious award, a work must have been written by an individual of Asian descent living in the United States and published originally in English during the calendar year preceding the award year (for example, works published in 2004 are eligible for the 2005 Literary Awards). Self-published works apparently don't make the cut. Beyond that, anyone can submit a book within these guidelines for consideration.

Here are the full guidelines and list of previous winners in the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry categories (plus there is a Members' Choice Award that is presented annually) : http://www.aaww.org/aaww_awards.html

The four books that I am currently reading and judging for this award are all thrillingly different and quite impressive in their lyrical voices, the range of research, and general insightfulness with which they each approach their book's subjects. What a treat to curl up to more books!

I won't disclose anything more for fear that I'm already disqualifying myself as judge-worthy, but here are the books in the running.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Seeing that I haven't officially HAD a summer vacation since, oh 1992 (I've had no rest! I'm a workin girl), I am rediscovering the bliss of camping, hiking, kayaking, picnicking and tooling the motor boat around the lake while the boys go fishing IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING WEEK.

Kimi and Anthony apparently won some power boat rental out at San Pablo Reservoir, so we piled the boys into the car, packed our bentos and headed for the water. Let us say now that noone caught a single durned catfish, but glory be, noone hooked someone's eyelid or cheek with carelessly wielded rods.



In fact, it was downright scary being on that boat with three rowdy guys who still got their rocks off flinging sardine guts and worms on each other.



Former Fresnan soaks up the latest tome by Valley writer extraordinaire, Mark Arax. Alas, no pictures of Kimi in this series, since she was the faithful photographer. Given a choice though, I would have taken a shot of the moment when she spit up a mouthful of mint lemonade when 10 minutes into the journey, Doug loudly announced that someone had already hooked his foot.

August 6, 1945

And on that very note, let us not forget that 55 years later, we as humans all live under the shadow of our own destructive powers. Man's introduction to the atomic age came when uranium a-bomb "Little Boy" was detonated above the military port city of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945- a perfectly clear day. Nearly 140,000 people died (many were instantly vaporized by the intense heat of the bomb, while others recovered, only to succumb later to extreme radiation related maladies). As the writer Yuichi Serai once wrote, "When mankind dropped the atomic bomb, I think, people abandoned God and their humanity."



To gain some perspective on my choice of this horrific image, I wrote my entire senior thesis on the literature of the Atomic Bomb experience, or "Genbaku no Bungaku" and have spent years collecting books on the bizarre culture that was born out of Hiroshima and the atomic age in Japan in general.


Draft press release by U.S. President Truman. Seeing that I have been spending a considerable amount of time reading and researching original documents on the occupation of Japan (and the role that Japanese American military intelligence translators played in the days, months and years after the Emperor surrendered), re-reading Truman's pr machine in action is sort of a mindfuck.

8 Random Things About PMW

as tagged by my dear friend Cheryl of Poets & Writers! Except that I'm going to break the rules and just post eight things without passing on cuz I"m just like that.



ˆMy portrait as taken by relatives in Hiroshima, Japan. They insisted on gussying me up in full kimono and taking formal pictures for wedding prospects. Needless to say, I only went halfway and just had pictures taken in the house, not in some fussy studio and never got the hookup. See Random Item #5.ˆ

1.) When I was growing up, my bro, sister, mom and I raised Guide Dogs for the Blind. I also read those encyclopedias of dog breeds voraciously and can now spot and identify over 50 breeds as they mosey down the street.

2.) I am super well versed in California native plants- I love me a sisyrinchium bellum, a philadelphia lewisii, quercus agrifolia. I attribute the bulk of this to the fact that when I was in third grade, I met this rad girl named Misty whose parents owned land up in the Sierra Foothills above Fresno. We would go up there on the weekends and stay at their amazing rustic cabin (like we were in Little House in the Prairie), battling rattlesnakes, building stone dams in the creek, trucking dirt roads in a white golf cart, and yes, learning the names of native plants to earn us Girl Scout badge points. If you don't believe me, let's go for a hike.

3.) I wish I were more metal. Go figure.

4.) I have had two boyfriends in a row with the same birthday- December 7th- the day of infamy, no less. Tora! Tora! Tora!

5.) Both sides of my family (mother and father) are descendants from HIroshima, Japan. That makes me 4th Generation Japanese American/California, but 100% Hiroshima-jin.

6.) I can't do handstands. Nor cartwheels. I suck. Katonk.

7.) The first record I ever fell in love with was ELO's "Discovery". You know, the one with the Aladdin guy stealing the neon ELO disk out of the silken purses of like, the Shah. Then on the back of the album there is an army of angry guards waving scimitars over their heads while they race through the dunes- our hero still clutching the musical talisman against his vest...

8.) Once, when I was over at my friend Nguyen Qui Duc's house (he is an international journalist, writer, photographer and former host of the KQED program "Pacific Time") I accidentally set fire to one of his original polaroid prints. As in I burned a piece of artwork that commands hundreds of dollars in galleries. At this writing, we are in fact somehow still friends.

Thanks Cheryl! That was was oddly satisfying and therapeutic.