Nom de Plume

Or rather, Kiyoshi Saito meets crazy chicken lady meets crazy chicken lady’s unemployed boyfriend meets the alley-facing back of our garage.

But that wouldn’t fit in the title area. And it probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense. Not that the name Kiyoshi Saito necessarily makes a lot of sense either, unless you’re a fan of sosaku hanga.

Anyway, I have a Kiyoshi Saito woodblock print of two roosters called Competition for a Charm. I love it. There are other prints of his that I covet fiercely and can’t afford, but I remember this one from my childhood, when it hung in my parents room. It went with me to college and it has been with me in every place since.

And of course, now I have become a crazy chicken lady with a boyfriend that has too much time on his hands. Not, you understand, that I’m complaining. “We need some chicken art on the back of the garage,” he said the other day. “I know what I’ll do!”**

**Steve credits his inspiration to Joy Wants Eternity. If anyone should feel so inclined, he would love free tickets.

Last night’s auction was pretty incredible, and it was also emptier than usual. So I lucked out. First, I snagged two Danish modern teak bed side tables–the exact tables we needed for our bed (the platform kind with all the storage). Only difference is that these are about 50 years older. I think they might even be solid teak.

Next, I also snagged a Junichiro Sekino woodblock for next to nothing. It was in a terrible frame, and the colors seemed pretty dingy. But it lightened up without the grimy glass–and it was framed flat on painted plywood, so it’s still in pretty good condition. I found it in the Sekino reference book Elias gave me (thank you): It’s Minakuchi from the Tokaido series.

These were little nothing prints–I can’t even remember who they’re by–that I think will become more collectible as time goes on.

My mother let me filch this one .. oh joy …

Funnily enough, my mother bought another one in this series, while I have these two:

Heian Shrine

Picture doesn’t do this justice at all, but it was one of those eBay gambles that paid off and led me to get the second one.

I had been coveting this print for a long time–although completely unrelated, it reminds me of that part in Harry Potter where he’s swimming through the lake to rescue Ron ….

And then there’s this little guy:

Wow, I am SO behind on posting new woodblocks. Aside from the fact that the blog has been languishing, the last version of WordPress I was using wouldn’t upload images properly. Anyway, this is what’s I’ve gotten from Artelino since I last posted:

Gihachiro Okuyama

Tokyo University

Morning after the First Snow

Saburo Miyata

Mountain Stream at Oirase

Unknown

Now doesn’t THAT sound all art gallery-ish.

I have a ton of unframed prints I haven’t posted up at the house. Those that come with frames, I lug down to the shack and put up on the many bare walls. Which is where I am, and where my digital camera is, so ….

Eichii Kotozuka. I’m not a huge fan, with the exception of a couple of prints. She looks so young and tense, and the way her kimono is depicted is lovely. That said, if this hadn’t been dirt cheap, I probably wouldn’t have bought it:

Another one I wouldn’t have bought if it hadn’t been dirt cheap. But I have another print with a girl and rabbit, and it appealed to my whimsy to have two. The frame and glass are terrible, but the print itself is in good shape, notwithstanding the fact that someone folded the margins to make it fit in the frame. It looks much better outside the frame–but I have other prints I would rather spend money on framing, so back in it went.
Oh yes, this is Shuzo Ikeda.

Sometimes, one (that is the royal one, one understands) does not pay very close attention to the size of what one is bidding on–and one ends up paying a lot for two little “nothing” prints rather than not very much for two prints one knows nothing about but likes.

Sigh. I love Toshi Yoshida’s less representational stuff. Pencil titled, signed, and dated 1954. It needs to be reframed at some point, but I rather like it as is:

I just bought this Toshi Yoshida …

… and this Kiyoshi Nagai …

… and it occurs to me that I haven’t posted any of the prints I’ve bought in the past 6 to 8 months. So here they are.

A Mikumo print–which confuses me, because I thought Mikumo was a publisher. I like this print, but the main reason I bought it was because my great aunt Elaine had it. It reminds me of her little house in San Diego, with the huge deck built into a little green canyon.

I think I’m over the Tokuriki phase. The prints are quite pleasant, but some of them are just not very appealing. Like this one:

On the other hand, I really like this little Teruhide Kato:

Ditto Maekawa Senpan:

And I don’t really know why I ended up getting these three Kaoru Kawano prints at that auction house I like going to–other than the fact that they were dirt cheap. I don’t like Kawano. Every time I look at them, I get a creepy feeling. But here they are: