SCHEDULE FOR ART JAM CANADA 2010
(scroll down to read "About Art Jam" plus "Artists' Bios" below)
For further details call Robert Amos, artistic director, at 250-389-0303.

Wednesday, July 7: 1 pm
The Asian Art Society presents a lecture at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria - There is no Business like Slow Business: The Nature of Japanese Noh Theatre with Dr. Cody Poulton, Chair of the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies, University of Victoria.

Thursday, July 8: 7.30 pm
Gallery opening at Collective Works Gallery. Kineya and friend to perform briefly.

July 8-21
Art Jam 2010 - exhibition of artists from Japan and Victoria at the Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria.

Friday, July 9: 7.30 pm
Show at Ladysmith Arts Council’s Waterfront Gallery. Grand opening at Ladysmith Arts Council’s Waterfront Gallery with Chief John Elliott. Buffy Seymour will bless the event, classical musical performance,
also Kineya and friend to perform.

Monday, July 12:
Sugimoto Hiroshi begins a painting course with artist students at Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts.

Wednesday, July 14:
Ito Kojiro carving course begins at MISSA. Suzuki Toshiichi pottery course begins at MISSA.

Wednesday, July 14: 7 pm
Presentations by all three Japanese artists - Sugimoto, Ito, Suzuki -followed by formal recital by Nakasho and son. Kineya may also perform. Open to the public.

Thursday, July 15: Classes continue.

Friday, July 16: final day of courses.

Saturday, July 17: 11 – 4 pm
TD Art Gallery Paint-In (11-4 *Moss Street Paint-In). Robert Amos, Luke and John Marston, Jason Grondin, Harumi Ota, Dante Sali, Williams, Dennis Brown will take part together with Japanese artists.

Sunday, July 18: 2-4 pm
"Conversational Café” at University of Victoria’s Legacy Gallery, with Japanese and Victoria artists: Ito, Sugimoto, Nakasho and Shingo Nakasho, Harumi Ota, Dan Sali, Jason Grondin, Robert Amos, Andrea Walsh, Noriko Watters.

Sunday, July 18: 7.30 pm
Nakasho Noh performance at Philip T. Young Recital Hall, University of Victoria theatre preceded by a short lecture by Cody Poulton.

Monday, July 19:
Afternoon cultural event with Victoria Nikkei Japanese Cultural Society.

Tuesday, July 20: 4 pm
Tea party at Emily Carr House.

Tuesday, July 20: 7.30
Closing party at Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria's gallery.

ABOUT ART JAM
An international artist’s exchange

Throughout July this year three Japanese artists will come Vancouver Island as part of Art Jam 2010, a festival of art shows, performances and workshops throughout southern Vancouver Island. The major activity of the Japanese and their Canadian hosts is a series of art exhibitions taking place simultaneously in three galleries in Victoria, and one in Ladysmith. In addition courses in painting, carving and pottery will be offered by the artists at the Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts. Two samisen players will be with the group to perform nagauta, Japanese ballads and two Noh theatre actors will perform during the second two weeks, offering background, performance and a taste of participation in this profound art form. This cultural exchange program was made possible by the coordinating efforts of Robert Amos in Canada with Sugimoto Hiroshi and Nobuyoshi Fukuda in Japan.

Art Jam has been developing for some years now. Based in the natural beauty of the Ome Region, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan, the Ome Art Jam is a movement determined to pay respect to nature and to share the traditions of Japanese art with the wider world. Beginning with his exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 2004, painter Sugimoto Hiroshi has been dedicated to creating an international cultural exchange among artists. In 2006 five Japanese artists attended the Art Gallery's Moss Street Paint-In in Victoria and a residency at University of British Columbia in Vancouver. In 2008 four Canadians spent three weeks at Art Jam 2008 in Ome with exhibitions throughout the Ome Mitake area and at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. Two Canadian television programs were created at that time.

In 2009, Ome Art Jam invited one Canadian, Jason Grondin of Victoria, along with Thai and Laotian artists to Japan. In September 2010 Dennis Brown of Ladysmith will attend Art Jam in Ome.

The core group of artists taking part in Art Jam include the following:

Sugimoto Hiroshi received a master’s degree in painting from the Tokyo National University of the Arts in 1977. He is noted for his paintings on sliding doors, walls and ceilings in significant buildings such as the Izumo Shrine (Osaka), Seigan-ji and Jizo-In Temples (Tokyo). His smaller paintings on fans, panels and folding screens involve ink, nihonga colours, gold leaf, metallic powders and collage. Sugimoto first exhibited at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 2004 and has returned annually to further his concept of Art Jam, a cultural exchange among artists. It is no exaggeration to say that Sugimoto is the guiding force behind the Art Jam movement.

Suzuki Toshiichi received his Master’s Degree in pottery from the Graduate School of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1990. In addition to a prestigious exhibiting career in Japan, his pottery is included in the permanent collection of the Yixing Ceramics Museum in China. Presently he is an instructor at Meisei University, Joshibi University of Art and Design and Yokohama College of Art and Design. Though youthful and ebullient himself, Suzuki’s ceramics are typically created in a deceptively modest kohiki style. Simple forms and neutral monochrome glazes are subtly crafted to enhance the look of food. Their wabi-sabi presence is constantly at play in the pleasure of using this elegant ware.

Ito Kojiro (b. 1945) is constantly occupied in Japan carving realistic statuary in wood for Buddhist temples. His deep religious conviction and consummate skills as a woodworker are a necessity for such work. Beyond this commissioned work, Ito's distinctive figurative carvings have been acquired by people in Japan as well as in overseas. These take the form of stylized people. Their refined heads are set into massive supports of wood, infused with striking designs of mineral pigments. Ito lives in an ancient house in the hills beyond Ome. When not carving, he is a teacher of woodcarving at art classes in Ikebukuro and Tachikawa, both in Tokyo.

Nakasho Nobuo (right) was born in 1958 and learned to enjoy Noh through his father. He started to perform Noh as a club activity at Hitotsubashi University, where he majored in philosophy. Unlike many professional Noh actors, he does not come from traditional Noh performers' family. Upon graduation, he entered one of the five Noh schools for Shite and received a training to become a professional Noh actor. He obtained a license for professional Noh actor (“Noh-gaku-shi”) five years later. Nakasho established his own association for Noh performance and has written several plays and performed throughout Europe and Southeast Asia. Nakasho has created workshops for everyone to experience the body expressions of Noh which are very popular, especially among foreigners.
He gave Noh performances at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 2004 and has been an integral part of Art Jam ever since.

Nakasho Shingo, born in 1993, is the second child of Nakasho Nobuo. His first appearance on the Noh stage was at three years old in “kuruma-tengu” as a child character in the play and by 2006 he had made twenty three appearances as the child actor. When the child reaches an age of voice change, he finishes playing the child character. In 2007, he played the part of SHITE, for the first time, in a performance of “kikujido.” And, since 2008, he has been playing the part of Ichiro in “Hikari-no-suashi (Barefoot of Light),” a modern Noh based on a novel written by Kenji MIiyazawa, which his father had played.

Kineya is a duo of world-class performers on the three-stringed Japanese instrument called the samisen. Kineya is coming to Canada to perform Japanese ballads of the type called nagauta.

Robert Amos is widely recognized as the artist who paints Victoria. In watercolour, acrylic and also Chinese ink and colours he has recorded almost every facet of life in Victoria. Seven books of his artwork have been published since 1989, and he also has published a weekly column On Art in the Victoria Times Colonist since 1986. Recently Amos has created solo exhibitions for the Maltwood Museum and the Legacy Gallery at the University of Victoria. With his Japanese associates in Art Jam he exhibited his paintings of Victoria in the Prince Takamado Gallery at the Embassy of Canada in Tokyo in 2008. Amos is a Honorary Citizen of Victoria, was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, and this year received an Outstanding Achievement Award from British Columbia Heritage. Amos attended Art Jam 2008 in Ome Japan. He is the Artistic Director of Art Jam Canada 2010.

Dennis Brown of Ladysmith is a painter equally well-known for his expressive landscapes in acrylic and his colour-saturated abstractions made with watercolours. A graduate of the Alberta College of Art, Brown also studied at the Victoria College of Art. He served on the Board of Directors of the Arts Council of Ladysmith and was instrumental in the establishment of the Ladysmith Waterfront Art Gallery. He will be attending Art Jam 2010 in Ome, Japan in September.

Luke Marston is a Coast Salish artist from Ladysmith who, like his brother John, trained with Simon Charlie and at the Royal British Columbia Museum carving shed. Represented by Victoria’s Alcheringa Gallery, his work has been exhibited in Japan at the Canadian Embassy, in America and at Vancouver’s Inuit Gallery. Luke was an integral part of Art Jam 2008 in Ome, Japan where his skills as singer and dancer drew acclaim. Since returning he has created a pole for the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia and a bent-wood box now travelling the country as the focal point of the reconciliation commission addressing the wrongs of the residential schools in Canada. Recently, Luke carved panels for the First Nations House at the University of Victoria.

John Marston began carving at the age of eight under the guidance of his parents and master Coast Salish carver Simon Charlie. With his brother Luke he worked in the carving shed at the Royal British Columbia Museum for a number of years. In 2005 Marston accompanied Elaine Monds of Alcheringa Gallery to Papua New Guinea where he was profoundly influenced by the carvers still working in the hunter-gatherer tradition and was the subject of a widely-broadcast film, Thunderbird and Crocodile. In 2008 Marston, with his brother Luke, was invited to take part in Art Jam 2008 in Ome, Japan where they lived with Buddhist carver Ito Kojiro for three weeks. Their work was part of an exhibition in the Prince Takamado Gallery of the Embassy of Canada in Tokyo. Two half-hour films documenting their participation in this event were made by a Canadian film crew. Marston was recently honoured with a British Columbia Creative Achievement Award for Aboriginal Art.

Jason Grondin paints pure abstracts which relate to the patterns of energy that make up our universe. In 2009 Grondin participated in the annual art event Ome Art Jam, showing in the Ome City Art Museum in, Japan. His style of painting was the subject of his workshop “Spontaneity Art: Drip Paintings and Watercolour” which he presented when he attended. Grondin was one of the founders of the Collective Works Gallery, a non-profit artist-run gallery in Victoria, in 2008. Since 2009 he has been the curator of that gallery.

Jimmy Wright graduated from university in California with a Masters degree in economics and worked in the financial world before opening up his first restaurant. Some time later he put it all aside to follow the life of a steelhead fishing guide in British Columbia’s Bulkley Valley. In the late 1980’s Wright moved to Victoria and created a new career as a successful and very effective painter. His signature polar bears were his “cash cow”, though with the advent of global warming they came to be seen as a “tunnel canary”. Wright’s work was a huge hit in Tokyo with Art Jam in 2008, his last major show before his death later that year. He will be represented in Art Jam 2010 in memoriam.

Other artists participating in the exhibitions include Al Williams, Harumi Ota, Dante Sali, Andrea Walsh, Pat Martin Bates, Elka Nowicka, Mary Fox Philip Backwell, Victor Duffhues and Paul Scrivener among others.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia; the Capital Regional District; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; the University of Victoria; Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts; Victoria Nikkei Cultural Society, and private donors. Japanese support for Art Jam is provided by Enza, NPO for Cultural Exchange.