Happy New Year!

Holiday wishes

...please click image to enlarge.

P5

back to youtube...

LV commercial

Louis Vuitton commercial - Fantastic Plastic Machine - "Different Colors"I think this Louis Vuitton commercial is so cool. I just discovered this website, imeem.com. It's great for listening to music. You can pretty much listen to anyone, even find whole albums. I hope it doesn't get shut down. You can't download from them, you still have to buy the music if you want it for yourself, like if you wanted to listen on your ipod, but for music off the computer it's the best I've found.

Paradise Park Art Studio tour

Fellow artists, Esther Sczegedy, Arthur Johnsen, hula friend, Yumiko-san, and I spent our Sunday doing the Hawaiian Paradise Park Art Studio Tour. It's always interesting to see other artists' studios. HPP is one of the largest neighborhoods in the U.S. and they seem to have their share of talent.

Santa's Elf...me

Can't believe how fast another year goes by... I'm only now beginning to try to come up with new styles for Xmas ornaments to sell at the gallery. Here's the first.

Kalani art show

I unfortunately didn't take my camera to last night's Art Show at Kalani but I must say I was glad I went (and even participated in it). Sometimes I start to feel like a hermit not wanting to venture out, forgetting that Kalani has these wonderful events, really more often than not. And it's so close (out here in this remote part of Hawaii). More than the art there were the huge pool of talent among the volunteers who work at Kalani. I suppose it attracts a higher percentage of alternative lifestyle types that would even come to Kalani (even as yoga and meditation have become so mainstream). From aerial dance to lots of music, a fashion show and even a very well done short movie we were well entertained. I must make sure to be at the next one.

Sawada Kenji World

I'm still stuck in Sawada Kenji Youtube land. It's fun to listen while doing my other work... (making cute little cards at the moment). It's unbelievable how much material there is... Youtube has to the best internet site of the 2000s (so far)...

Puna Butter

Arthur originally had this project but handed it over to me to massage things on the computer. Much better for making quick changes (his computer was down and he was doing things by hand--not good use of his time...there was a lot of copy to deal with). I was happy to help.

The product is new, Safi had been making this and as things go her friends encouraged her to get it out on the market. Her website is www.newvisionsphere.com

feeling Om sick

Last night my yoga instructor called me. I hadn't been going for a number of excuses, most good, like I was out of town, I was painting last week at the paintout, though this week I missed it because I overslept. The Yoga class is at 7 AM. It felt like I was getting a call from the high school principal. And she wasn't even calling about my missed classes, just that a new class for tonight had been cancelled. I didn't even know about it. But I still felt guilty about my missed session... see the trap guilt puts you in.

At least the class couldn't be more convenient (my obsession), it's just down the street at Ramashala.

Dear Laurie

My roommate (see above, that's me on the left, Laurie, my roommate, and our good friend, Grace) from my days in Tokyo (one incredible year) has a great blog where she talks about her experience with a Japanese pop singer. The other day, Arthur just happened to ask me what music I listened to (back in the day). My palate seemed limited. Then I remembered I also listened to J-pop. The YouTube phenomena is tremendous. Not only am I able to see old footage from when I was there but stuff I missed before and since. Here's what I remember (and I can't believe my pop star turned 60 this year).



Of course upon falling into the youtube hole I also found a concert I attended that was actually a television show that was being taped. I didn't see myself in the 32 year old tape but how freaky if I had. I was thinking what great material for a short story in this.

Back to my idol, Sawada Kenji. He was originally in a band called the Tigers, formed in the 60s after the Beatles came to Japan. But he was more like the Mick Jagger of Japan. In the 70s and 80s he was probably Japan's number one male singer. He still has a huge following, even in Hong Kong and Taiwan. I thought this video of a concert he did last year was so touching. He's having a 60th birthday concert in Osaka and Tokyo later this month and next month (though his birthday was in June). Wish I could go.



And here's the song orchestrated...

Big Island Paintout

Edie at mile 17

Arthur painting a panoramic hilo view from leleiwi

Lynne Boyer painting her favorite lifeguard station

Dan Young with Papoh president Jan Bushart

The Plein Air Painters of Hawaii (PAPOH) had a paintout last week on our island. Painters from neighboring islands came to this event. I love the convenience of having the paintout here.

Vote Obama

Get out and Vote!

We drove up to Pahoa and voted. I didn't want to wait until Tuesday, even though it would have been at Kalani (which would have been fun). There were no lines and no one was doing the electronic voting when I was there (they only had one machine). Maybe everyone is afraid of some kind of fraud. I didn't think of that at the time, I was just being my usual gadget self and it seemed easier to me. Besides, in this case, they did have a printer that made a copy of my votes.

There were two people running the election station that day. A woman at the computer who looked things up and a big guy who asked for i.d. The guy was kind of unsmiling and scarey, but then he offered us all Halloween candy.

Card versions

(my usual effort to make at least 50 cents an hour)

latest illustrations

It's my latest passion... I'll be selling them as greeting cards.

2008©tuko fujisaki

2008©tuko fujisaki

2008©tuko fujisaki

Chicago/Dick Nelson style

I couldn't help notice after taking Dick Nelson's color class these examples of his 'color arrays'. The morning sunlight hitting the Hancock building and then the stunning airport corridor on our way to our gate!

Chicago

What an amazingly beautiful city. I had no idea. This was my first trip. I couldn't believe the great architecture, how clean it was and how wide the sidewalks were. Wide enough to also have flower beds galore! Granted I spent most of my time in the downtown area near the Hancock (I think it was a nice part of town). The 'bean' was the unanimous favorite in the art department, but there were a lot of contenders. We did the tourist thing and rode the doubledecker bus. I highly recommend this as a great way to get a quick overview tour.

Abstract doodles

Just having some fun in the abstract vein... I'm thinking maybe the Christmas ornaments I do this year will have some of this. I did these on some old chip board that I found left over from a color class I took with Arthur at the EHCC over the weekend. If I'd done these on the computer with the help of my Wacom pad I did think how much faster I would've been (instead of the hours it took to fill in the black areas they could've been filled in in seconds). Still, there's something to that hand done look that's kind of nostalgic to life before computers...

Shark!

2008©tukofujisaki

Now of course I have a dilemma. I went swimming later than my usual mid morning because I thought I'd go paint with the Plein Air Painters of Hawaii Island (Amy has started her own blog about it). They were just down the street in Kalapana. So when I got back I still wanted to get my swim in (I get obsessed like this, in New York it was rollerblading everyday, in Santa Fe, hiking). I went with my friend, Rick. I like to swim with a buddy. We usually swim to these rocks across the bay and then to another close to Kehena Point and back. As we were heading towards the point I came across a menacing looking lone creature...

My first shark encounter, too up close and personal. I think it was a reef shark, not all that dangerous except in murky water. We both made it out safely. But still, there have been a lot of sitings lately and even beach closings on the west (Kona) side. So here's my question. How long do I wait before I can venture out there again? I'm a little scared now...(and yet, incredibly, Arthur, who was born in Oahu, has never seen a shark in Hawaiian waters in his life!).

A J Gallery Notes: Anne's Show

A J Gallery Notes: Anne's Show

Arthur posted some photos from our retrospective show for Anne Whitmore. Click on the link.

Life drawing

Recently we've gotten into a nice groove of having a life drawing session every Sunday either at Richard's of Kalani or Arthur's. This week we had two handsome models and I had fun with color, which seems to be my colors of the week, as you can see from the floral I also did this week.
as always with all images here, all copyrights belong to the artist.

Anne's Art

These are actually from our gallery website: www.arthurjohnsengallery.com.

Arthur has also posted photos of Anne on the gallery blog.

Video of Kehena Beach

Someone posted this on youtube.com of our little beach. I thought it was well done. The spider was a nice touch.

Anne Whitmore

Our dear friend and gallery mate Anne Whitmore passed away last night after a hard fought battle with cancer. She was our watercolor artist, a jewel among us oil painters with a wonderful style that said she was in command. I love her work, I love work that is simple yet strong, no extra frills, just whatever was needed to convey what she saw. I regret that I didn't paint with her. I saw her last Friday night at the abstract show opening. She had a piece in the show as well. She was so joyful, throwing kisses and big smiles. I'm glad that's my last memory of her.

This photo of one of her paintings is one she had in our recent SMALL Show. Sorry the quality of my photo is so poor. I'll try to get something better up next week.

Abstract portrait

I thought I'd try a blend of this abstract thing, my new "thing" and portraiture. This is from a photo of a friend who lives here part of the time and part of the time on the mainland.

Lava smoke

Meanwhile, the lava keeps on flowing. Huge plumes of smoke can be seen from miles away and hundreds of visitors are still making a pilgrimage there daily. I took this photo a couple of days ago and upon uploading onto the computer thought hmmm, the cloud looks kind of devilish. What do you think?

More Abstract Art

So now, thanks to the juried show, which Arthur and I did get into, I'm on this abstract art roll... It's fun which I think is reflected in the art. It's my 'play' series. The opening is tomorrow (Friday, 08-08-08--a very lucky day) at the Wailoa Center in Hilo, from 5 to 7 or something close to that.