We had met at Japan society two years ago; the idea of having a gallery show was conceived a year ago when one of our classmates had to relocate to Seattle. As farewell gifts, we gave her artworks we cherished and she loved them. Yama saw the artworks and was impressed and thought, “Hey! Maybe we could put an artshow together.”
Despite lots of enthusiasm from all the classmates, there were little movements; ideas were thrown around and dropped. After bidding farewell to our beloved classmate to Seattle, another classmate had to move to Florida for his job, then earlier this year, another one graduated and moved back to Chicago, and finally within the last ones standing, Yama had decided to move on as well. It was one of those moments when we realized, the group we had taken for granted for two years would eventually separate and the party would be over. Either we do this now or never.
We agreed the hardest part in pulling an Art show together was finding a space within our means. We definitely can’t afford $500 for an evening of three hours (this sounds ludicrous but if you check Craigslist, NYC real estate is ridiculous). We also had no connection to people who own real estate in NYC. We looked around and finally, in the first week of June, Mae from NY Studio Gallery responded and heard us out. Since the gallery had empty time slots in June, she took our meager offer. We were happy we could secure a place, but the next part was finding classmates to join our show and paying a share of the rent.
Sakura san joined without questioning our plan; she was enthusiastic about it and loves the samurais deeply so she was willing to participate and give without thinking of what would be returned. Kaito san took a bit of convincing since he was a programmer and did not feel he had the talent to be an artist; we were able to explain to him later on, being an artist has a lot to do with having the will to experiment, be curious and most importantly, find meanings in projects you are very interested in. Having talent, whatever that meant, helped a lot, but without perseverance, it didn’t amount to too much.
We visited the space, took photos and started throwing our ideas of how to plan at Cha An, a tea place in the East Village. We thought of our budget and “guessed” many things like how many guests we would have, what we would do, how we would place the artworks, what events we would have in that space. Yama also thought of the name Barbarian Sakura which Matsumori san had coined the previous year during an outing at the Brooklyn Botanical garden; while viewing the cherry blossoms, those of us who had never been to Japan were impressed and thought they were beautiful, but Matsumori who had been to Japan numerous times, noticed they were not real cherry blossoms since they had too many petals. He had called them “Barbarian Sakura.”
At that moment, we realized our ignorance of the Japanese culture despite spending over 2 years to study the language; we felt like we were “gaijins” or foreigners. The name of the show puts it perfectly; this is our barbaric perspective of Japan, through our eyes, this is how we see Japan, be it true or not. We want to share our perspectives with the world whether they are idealized or vandalized. Art is subjective; so are our perspectives.
After we got everybody 120% on board, we started working. It was very painful since we had very little direction. Yama works in finance and has very little time to commit since work takes up 70% of the day, Sakura san is an accountant and she, too, works 15 hours a day, Kaito has classes and is a programmer who works tons of hours, I am (was) taking two classes that take up 3 days out of 7 days on top of a full time job. It was very demanding- we met weekends to plan some more and worked on our artworks. The posters and graphics was another feat; I am a beginner in illustrator and was taking introductory courses on Lynda.com, the first posters I made (which I stayed up late to do), were pretty crappy and the first meeting was full of disappointment as we disagreed about budget, refreshments arrangements, delayed deadlines and bad posters.
Things started taking a turn when I asked friends for help; a friend who worked at a bakery, kindly donated 50 cupcakes, another donated very decadent chocolate, another donated money towards our insurance and another one offered to bartend for the opening. Things started to fall into place; poster designs were better, artworks were coming together, and we started to understand each other better. I am not saying suddenly, one day it became perfect- but I think the main thing was we didn’t give up and Mae from NYSG was very helpful and offered advice from her 5 years of experience of running a gallery. We were so fortunate to meet such good people who believed in us and supported us in various ways. Without the help of our friends and the gallery owner, this show would not have happened.
The show was successful in a way that would only reflect in the eyes of the beholders. To us, it was just a tiny sprout of an idea that blossomed into an artshow; it became a place where people could enjoy themselves without the rigid confines of a typical artshow. It was an artshow where just to have the will to be an artist could make you an artist-whether it was temporary or not didn’t matter. The sharing of the love of the culture was open to all, as long as there was a will to understand. A little bit of curiosity could lead to answers and explorations of the unknown. The experience was amazing; it made us realize it was not easy to run a gallery or have an artshow, the amount of work was underrated(think legally- contracts, insurances, organizing, marketing, etc), it was hard to be an artist but if we really wanted to do what we love, we have to believe in it even if the odds are against us.
nanansa 