insights from frontier Japan

An ‘Ice Hotel & Resort’ event to enable participants to enjoy winter is being held at ‘W-AWESOME,’ an outdoor base to be opened this summer at Sapporo Art Village, an art-related industrial complex adjacent to the Sapporo Art Forest (Geimori) in Minami-ku, Sapporo. This is the first of the pre-opening events, featuring three hotels made of ice and snow, designed by three Sapporo-based artists.

Art work using ‘jewelry ice,’ which are lumps of transparent ice that drift ashore in winter, have been displayed on the Otsu coast in the town of Toyokoro in the Tokachi region. The coast was enveloped in a magical atmosphere, with the works of art shining golden in the morning sun.

An exhibit called "Kyokai" (Border) showing work from Tokyo-based modern artist Yoshino Shotaro is being held at Manabe Garden in Obihiro. Using mirror film that is reflective like a mirror on the outside, Yoshino depicts a world in which real and imaginary images intermingle.

‘Rice-paddy art’ is a huge picture created using six types of colored rice plants, with the rice paddy as a canvas. Members of the executive committee, made up of individuals from the Young Farmers Division of the Taisetsu Agricultural Cooperative and the like, produced the rice paddies in the Higashitakasu 7-sen 18 district of the city of Asahikawa, and the rice harvesting was held on October 12th to conclude this season’s activities.

An artwork exhibit for sculptor Yasuda Kan (76), who hails from Bibai but is based in Italy, began on September 1 in Gallery She’s in Asahikawa and the community complex "Centpure 1 and 2" in Higashikawa, a town situated in the Northern Hokkaido Kamikawa region. Works displaying Yasuda's unique curvaceous beauty in bronze and marble are drawing in visitors.

An ‘Ura Otaru Baza-Art’ (the other side of Otaru Bazaart) event　began in Otaru on August 11. Work by the world-renowned artist Nara Yoshitomo is exhibited at the venue, which has been visited by many locals.

‘Rice-paddy art’ in which different colored rice is planted in paddy fields to created pictures, is reaching its peak viewing period in the Higashi Takasu district of the city of Asahikawa in central Hokkaido.

　‘Erosion’, an exhibition of work by Umeda Masanori, a contemporary artist that resides in the city of Obihiro in the Tokachi region of eastern Hokkaido, is being held at an outdoor gallery in the Manabe Garden tourist attraction in the city. The installation utilizes garden paths surrounded by countless larch trees.

From April 29 onward, a photograph exhibit by globally famous artist Nara Yoshitomo (61) appeared in 13 shops, including knickknack shops and restaurants, in the cities of Sapporo and Otaru.