Oda

Posted by moonminded on March 28, 2015 in Art, Drink and Draw, Sketch | Leave a comment

Ten years ago I bought a set of stationery cards called Goddesses. A set of twelve with four each attributed to a season. It never occurred to me to think beyond my writing desk and its curated pleasures to Mayumi Oda as a fine artist, or I would have known more about her significant contribution to Japanese screen printing prior to the art museum’s exhibition. It’s been a real magnet for me in the past months and it closes in a few weeks. Last night it was the familiar, 3,000-strong throng of “4th Friday” which is a Drink-and-Draw Meet-Up staple. I settled into the basement gallery with my pen brush and three new Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils to merge two diptychs into one: Morning Breath, My Breath, 1981. (The pencils are amazing – they blend and melt better than any I’ve tried. At $4.25 a pop I only got the primaries and used them to get these pretty secondaries.) With pen straight to paper, it was a meditative precursor to the “drink” part of Drink-and-Draw. I imagined my twelve prosaic updates on those Goddess cards out in the world in the desks, junk drawers, and bags of paper ephemera that people tuck away in closets- unwilling to throw out, but with no good way to manage. But perhaps I’m transferring my own nature onto my friends…?