Memory shows: Yuji Agematsu

I try to review my favourite art shows when I see them. But there are some shows that creep up on me. I enjoy them at the time but months or years later, they still resonate in my imagination.

So I decided to review these shows—even though the details are vague and I have few photos.  I’ve had to research who exactly the artists were and what the shows were about. But it’s been a worthwhile process to discover more about the artists and the art. Besides, at a time when museum and gallery access is limited due to the pandemic, what better way to visit art shows than in our imagination?

One thing I’ve enjoyed during the pandemic is the displays that children have made in the forests near my house. From painted stones to moss hearts to tiny dioramas, their imagination makes every walk more intriguing. Unfortunately, the children seem to have moved on, but the original shrines remain.

Which brings me to an artist who forces me to notice the all details around me.

I immediately loved the work of Yuji Agematsu when I saw it at the New Museum in NYC back in 2016. His art practice involves taking a walk around New York and gathering tiny bits of garbage. He picks up bones, plastic, glitter, whatever catches his eye. Once home, he curates the detritus and puts it into a cellophane wrapper from a cigarette package. He repeats this process each day. The resulting tiny sculptures are precious, weird, revolting—all at the same time.

What is fascinating to me is the simplicity of the process and the complexity of the result. You know it’s trash, yet when carefully elevated to museum status—you can’t help admiring each work. Agematsu’s work makes you look twice at the bits between the sidewalk cracks. You can see his work at a show now at Le Maison de Rendez-Vous in Brussels; there are cellophane sculptures and larger collages. But if you get a chance to see his art in person, I highly recommend it. You can spend hours figuring out what each package contains and why it ends up looking so mesmerizing.

Three Times the Charm

Mia Weinberg’s studio shows her love of nature.

You may have already seen the art of Mia Weinberg and not even known it. She creates public art. Her illuminated nature map was seen at the Richmond Skytrain Station. She designed another nature map for the floor of the Delbrook Community Centre in North Vancouver. Public art enlivens our everyday lives, but we seldom recognize the artist or the effort.

In this blog series, I'm interested in discovering what triggers people to turn to art after another career. In Mia's case, it was not a single turning point, but a series of leaps.

Mia came to art through a very circuitous route. She grew up in England and although she loved art as a child, she believed that real artists had an innate ability to draw. Although she excelled at pottery and screen printing, she couldn’t draw and thus believed that she wasn’t creative enough to be an artist. She went on to study materials technology and became a packaging designer in the plastics industry. 

But after nearly a decade of hard work and success, she made a bold decision. She was going to rent out her house, quit her steady job, and move to Vancouver to explore her artistic side. She explained to her puzzled friends and worried parents that this would be the gap year that she had never taken. 

Why did Mia make such a drastic change? It was a combination of things. Her job had shifted and she was looking for a change. Her milestone thirtieth birthday was approaching. Her sister had just gotten married—in Vancouver.

After arriving in Canada, Mia dove into the creative life and took art classes.  After her “gap year” was over, she decided to stay in Vancouver, applied for her visa, and found a job. Eventually she enrolled in the fine arts program at Emily Carr University.

But even though she had moved much closer to her childhood dream of being an artist, Mia's pragmatism still won out and she chose the industrial design stream. Her immigrant parents ingrained a strong work ethic in Mia, which meant she prioritized the responsibility to support herself. Night shift work at the post office financed her while she was at art school.

Her second turning point came at a summer retreat for personal development with new friends from art school. Mia realized what was really important to her was fine arts and freedom of personal expression. She switched from industrial design over to painting and photography, and began experimenting with photograms. Photograms allowed her to express her love of nature and natural forms. (You can see one of her photograms in the studio photo above.)

After graduating from Emily Carr, Mia continued with the photograms and her work at the post office. Then an opportunity arose for her to work with an art consultant. This job was more related to her art practice and its part-time hours allowed her to work on her art. At work, Mia created proposals and presenting to businesses—all new experiences for her.

The final turning point for Mia came when she was invited to apply for a public art project in Edmonton, which combined natural forms with granite. Public art was a perfect synthesis for Mia. The Edmonton project combined the nature themes of her photography, her work in industrial materials, and the business aspects of her art consulting. She loved the experience and began to apply for more public art projects.

A public art career is different from a studio practice. Mia applies to cross-Canada competitions for public art pieces. She develops a concept and then researches the materials involved---like the engraved granite she used in Edmonton. Her proposal includes: the artwork concept, a construction schedule, and a budget. The budget includes artist fees. After writing and submitting a proposal, she waits to hear if she has won the competition. Delays are common, and it can take months or even years before the artwork actually happens. Her schedule is tough to predict and years can be crazily busy or scarily empty.

Naturally, the more public art you create, the more well-known you become and the easier it is to win competitions. For Mia, her dream is to become so renowned that she will get to skip competition process. The day I interviewed her, she was finishing a proposal, and waiting to hear about two others. However precarious this life might be, Mia loves her public art practice. For the first time since she quit her job in England, she works full time in art alone.

Mia's art career has lessons for other creative people looking to pursue their dreams.

Don’t give up your day job.

Mia walked the tightrope between creative dreams and practicality. Although she was drawn to art from the beginning, she resisted the impracticality of an art career. She worked first in an art-adjacent field—packaging design—to make a living. In this way, she built up a nest egg that allowed her the financial freedom to take off for Canada and art school. Throughout her art career, she maintained part-time jobs alongside her art practice. Mia can proudly say that she has always supported herself.

But…your day job can inspire your art.

When Mia finally settled on public art, she was able to synthesize all her life experiences, something that a younger artist would not be able to do. Her work in industrial design, her interest in nature and photogram work, her art consultancy experience—all have come together in her current art. Most artists draw upon their lives and history to create art; the more experience you have to draw on, the more depth your art will have. 

To see more of Mia’s artwork, especially the public art you may have already admired, check out her website.

To Infinity and Beyond

In the summer, I went to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum. Don’t get me started on the antiquated system of lining up to get tickets. As I waited for 90 minutes to get the tickets, I wondered if the queuing was part of the hype for the show. Actually, it turned out to be practice for when you had line up for every single room installation in the exhibition. But all the staff at the SAM were lovely. The ticket people must be trained to defuse angry customers because in the time it took to buy three tickets, she complimented my glasses, my home city, and my pink wallet.

When you think of Yayoi Kusama, polka dots come to mind. Indeed, shops around the SAM are taking advantage by decorating with polka dots to lure people with Kusama fever. But none of these displays look as incredible as the dots in the show.

The reason for this is simple. What Kusama is really famous for is repetition. Repetition taken to a ridiculous level.

Last week, I wrote about the online course I took on modern abstraction.  Kusama was one of the artists covered, and we made a painting in the style of each artist. For Kusama, we were supposed to make an Infinity Net painting. This meant painting tiny loops all over a painted surface. Repeating one motion over a small canvas was both meditative and crazy-making for me. I can’t even imagine doing the same loops over a large canvas (up to 14 feet or 4 metres) as Kusama does. But that’s what makes her work great. It’s not the ideas, it’s the scale.

She creates a lighting installation and then multiplies it with mirrors. She creates environments where you have to experience visions as she intended them.

She takes something as simple as a stick-on polka dot and lets us repeat it all over a white room until it’s beautiful and awe-inspiring. Everyone in the installation room was smiling, either because they had participated in the art or because it was fun in there.

So whatever creative project you’re working on, think about scale. Is there a way you could blow up your project to a ridiculous scale? If you’re making art could it be bigger—so much bigger that it stretches your logistical mind? Or can you multiply the number of items? Don’t go for easy increases, push yourself to obsessive levels. There’s magic in the craziness.