Hibi Sanpo 6: August is the rolling.

A quick stop by

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by, I hope everyone is well. It is still incredibly hot here in Tokyo, and I don’t have a lot of interesting life updates, except my partner and I are continuing our plan of escape out of Tokyo. We really hope to find a traditional house one day/ Kominka to look after and retire with. Bonus points if it haunted.

Here are a few snapshots and textile postcards from recent Hibi sanpo adventures. I’ve made about 20 so far, and they’re looking more and more cohesive as a project and future book idea, and feel substantial when held in my hands as a group.

I am an admirer of Japanese playground equipment

I love how there appears to be no standard set of equipment. Or safety standards. No two playgrounds are ever alike. Some look straight out of Soviet era Russia. Some look like they were an architectural students master’s thesis, like this one above. All concrete and strange angles, like a piece of coral. The concrete was pock marked, rough, and clearly weather worn. I imagine this space has claimed a few front teeth, and scraped more than its fair share of knees. In general, if there are no kids around, I will likely climb through a playground, swing on a swing, etc.

My partner caught this unflattering picture of me crawling backwards out of the spiral concrete spiral staircase. It was too tight a space, and the thought of a weather beaten concrete slide as my reward made me rethink my decision.

You win this time coral castle playground.

Ueno is a small oasis in the city.

I often find myself walking through Ueno park. It’s close enough to my house, and in the summer the lotus are particularly green and blooming in the pond. When it’s winter, and the lotus have all died back, you can see that the pond is absolutely filled with giant carp, but in the summer, all you can hear is their splashing underneath the lotus.

I like to imagine that this is what the Karp see when they look up from the water.

We got to see some fun exhibitions

(Which is why it will be so hard to possibly leave Tokyo. We love the museums.)

We got to see the Theaster Gates exhibition, which was one of the most immersive curations I have ever experienced. His work is so diverse, but each room reflected that and highlighted each aspect of his practice. The room that pumped in his custom incense he created, his library of BIPOC books you could freely borrow and read at your leisure in the exhibition, and the room with the spinning disco sculpture were some highlights.

But my favorite was this abstract piece, made from the reclaimed floors of gyms from historically black public schools that had been demolished.

It felt very nostalgic.

We also got to see the Alexander Calder exhibit. It was of course stunning, and had a lot of his representative work, but this tree sculpture below was new to me, and stood out from the rest of the exhibition. It had a presence I can’t quite put my finger on.

The Calder tree

I’m not much of a writer or journal keeper

But I have had a practice of abstract poetry for years. Short form is something I can handle and focus on. At the recommendation of a few friends, I’ll share some here on my newsletter. More often than not they are the inspiration for the shorter abstract words I use on Instagram as titles for the pieces they inspire. Maybe what I am actually working towards is an illustrated poetry book?

August

August is the rolling

Down pines

And the peach pits

Red like peeling paint.

Thank you as always for stopping by, and for your continued support of my work. I hope these snippets show a bit of daily life and sources of inspiration. The August piece shown above and serval other original works are now in my online shop, which you can check out Here .