internal murmuring

after having lived in london, ON for four weeks, we stayed in victoria, BC for one week.

we visited beacon hill park.

it’s time to check out wheels with a stick.

whoa~!  super exciting!

and he never forgets to be adorable.

finally we’re back in saskatoon.  it’s good to be home.  i like it here.

during my summer holidays from elementary school, i was supposed to do a drawing every day showing the growth of  a “morning glory” flower i planted in the spring.  it was a combined science and art project.

i always drew the entire made-up 6-week record of the flower growing two days before school started at the beginning of september.  my drawings would end up showing a bigger, more beautiful and impressive flower than actually grew in real life.  a big bloom would show up suddenly in my drawings on august 30th or 31st.

one year, my flower died because i forgot to water it.  i did the same kind of drawings anyway.

(click image to enlarge)

someone wrote me an email recently saying my work knocked his socks off, and that people at his work were wondering where his socks went.

i never heard the idiom “knocked my socks off” before, so i took it literally. i wrote back to him and told him to hold on to his feet. i was thinking about that conversation when i drew this.

this drawing is called “meichuu” (命中), which is japanese for “bullseye”. the kanji literally mean “life center”.

i’m showing this as part of a show called “girls at play”, at compound gallery, in portland. this will be my first show in the US. if you live in the portland area, please come to the show. i’ll be at the opening reception, november 1st.

girls at play

four female artists who represent a new movement in japanese art
(show details)

november 1 - 30
reception november 1st @7pm

compound gallery
107 nw 5th avenue
portland, oregon

Update

welcome to people from Digg — i’m your “midweek weirdness“.

if you like my drawings, there are more on my gallery page.

i mean, this drawing…

“shi- shimatta…” (oops…)

“sayonara.”

this is a pala-pala (flipbook) type story that i drew on yellow post-it notes. i felt so embarassed when i realized this, i had to throw my emotion out somewhere.

i’ve been working on a set of drawings for my part of the group show coming up at compound gallery next month. several of them featured roosters. once i realized this, i stopped drawing roosters and started drawing other things, like a heart with legs sitting on a bench and a boy with breasts for his eyes sewing the head back on to a trout.

i’ll put those drawings up here over the next couple weeks. even the ones with roosters.

i just made a birthday card for a seven-year-old boy named shane, from lancaster, ontario. he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of five. he made a wish this year - he would like to break the world record for the most birthday cards ever received. his goal is 350 million cards. so far, he has received 125,000 cards. his birthday is may 30th.

i was contacted by one of my contacts on flickr. i thought i should spread the word.

if you would like to wish him a happy birthday, here is the address:

Shane Bernier
PO Box 484
Lancaster, Ontario
K0C 1N0
Canada

for more about his story, visit his website.

i can’t wait to breastfeed poko-chan. i hope my milk is as tasty as a fresh apple.

i spend most of my waking time thinking about poko-chan and our life together as a family of three. i’m really looking forward to meeting poko-chan in seven weeks. people like to tell us horrible stories about giving birth or bringing up children. but i listen to them with a grain of salt. of course it will be difficult because we are new parents and poko-chan is new to the world, but i think our effort will be nothing compared to poko-chan trying to live.

like my dad always says, “you’ll forget about all the hard things that happened when you look at the angel face of your child”.

you can view the progress of this drawing here:

art recipe 1
art recipe 2
art recipe 3