To-ou Nippou, (news paper) July 20, 2000
COMMUNICATION VIA "ORIKOMI ART"
Prefecture plans and invites participants
On August 10th, a unique art workshop called
"Orikomi Art" will launch in Aomori City.
In "Orikomi (Newspaper Inserts) Art," children will visit and do research
on local merchants, then create newspaper inserts about them. Instead of
being an advertisement for the business or products they sell, the inserts
will be about, say, the shop owners' hobbies, historic origins of the buildings,
or something the children's interests will discover during the visits to
the merchants.
The kids will paint what they will have learned, which will in turn be made into finished newspaper inserts by an artist, Rica Takashima (originally from Tokyo).
The inserts will be delivered to local households as a part of the Toh-Oh Nippou newspaper morning edition on August 19th. "Let's enjoy Japan's first home delivery of art!" Rica Takashima invites everyone to join this art event.
"Orikomi Art" is a part of "Kids Art World Aomori 2000," hosted by the Aomori
Art Museum and Park Project Office.
Children from all local elementary and junior high schools are invited to
join.
Four merchants from Shin-machi Mall and Yanagi-machi Mall will take part
in the event.
Mitsubishi Paper Corp.at Hachinohe Plant will donate the paper to be made
into the inserts, and Colony Printing will print them at discounted price.
Focus of this unconventional workshop is to facilitate communication between
children and local community. "People do not usually associate local merchants
with art. So when kids visit them to do research, it opens up a new type
of communication right there," says Yoko Itakura, curator at the Aomori
Art Museum and Park Project Office.
"Moreover, when kids look at the merchants outside the realm of a market
economy, we hope that they will discover something new, of which we want
them to express by way of creating newspaper inserts. Children will experience
a different type of communication through such a process," she adds.
From the start to the end when the inserts will finally reach the city residents,
ripples of communication will be sent out; first from the artists and children,
then to children and the merchants and the local business owners, to the
people in the city as they find the inserts in their morning papers.
"Orikomi Art" is the mediator of all.
Rica Takashima contents that children "will experience that having many people look at their art is equivalent to communicating with each one of audience through what they created."
"I want them to realize that what you externalize as art bears a power of
influencing others and that to express yourself is indeed a very precious
act," she stresses.
The workshop will take place on August 10th and 11th, then the 17th through
20th.
It is a free event and all family members are welcome to join also.
Please register by sending a postcard with your name, age, return address,
and phone number to the address below.
