newspaper

the owner of a fashion boutique in taiwan, TUAN TUAN, contacted me to request the use of my drawings for a promotional campaign. she wrote me personal emails to express their company philosophy as well as how she felt close to my work. she has a strong passion for art and treats fashion as art. i felt very touched by how thoughtful she was and how much she likes my drawings. so i decided to work with her.

she chose my drawings “new heartbeat” and “my precious egg” for this campaign, announcing the opening of their new boutique in taipei. i think they are great match — i did both drawings when i was pregnant with elijah, and they both have the idea of birth and new life.

the ads featuring my drawings appeared in taiwan’s biggest newspaper, “apple daily“, back in september (7th and 14th). i was told the ads would be full page, but i didn’t realize the effect until i received the actual newspaper, they’re so big… the ads also ran in a fashion magazine called madame figaro in taiwan. i was interviewed by madame figaro for an article, which i’ll post here soon.

TUAN TUAN carries COMME des GARCONS, junya watanabe, camper, 45 rpm, maison martin margiela, undercover, and BALENCIAGA. they will be making a tote bags using my drawings, for sale in the boutique. you can buy a print of “new heartbeat” from my online shop.

(click the image to view close up)

this is my attempt to draw a newspaper-style comic. the caption says:

“anything you want to say?”

“…………………….. no.”

as a japanese, i know many different ways to apologize. humbly apologizing is a japanese tradition. somehow i think people in western countries might not have as many techniques for giving an apology. here’s an instructional video prepared by social scientists at the japan culture lab, designed to help everyone appreciate the japanese art of apologizing, and learn how to use these techniques for themselves.

also posted on videosift.

(click to enlarge — full article PDF below)

a couple weeks ago, i was interviewed by felicia chen, a writer for the sheaf, the university of saskatchewan student newspaper. she came over to my apartment. this was only my second time being interviewed so i was still nervous, but she was very friendly.

the interview lasted for three hours. even though it was a long interview, surprisingly it wasn’t long enough to cover everything i wanted to say, partly because my answers tend to be meandering. it’s hard for me to talk about what i do, and especially hard in english if i’m a bit nervous. i get really excited and i can’t put my thoughts together. when that happens, people who know me can understand what i mean but for someone i just met i’m probably confusing. :D

after the interview, i felt i hadn’t explained my thoughts clearly enough. so i wrote my answers to her questions and some additional information and sent her an email. it was a good exercise for me. a lot of the questions were about my artwork. i don’t like to talk about “ART” in general and i have a hard time explaining what i’m doing. so i thought about it for a long time and wrote a really long email. felicia was very nice and read the whole thing and some of my ideas showed up in this article.

i’m very happy with this article in the end. it’s really good at showing my floating thoughts. like i keep saying, my mind is everywhere.

you can read the article about me and see the whole newspaper (PDF) at the sheaf website. there’s no way to link directly to the article yet, so i’ve uploaded the two pages here. you can open them in PDF and read the small newspaper text. there are 2 files to open, one per page.

page:1 page:2

see also: the first newspaper article about me, from the saskatoon star-phoenix (july 1st)

five years ago, on canada day, i got engaged. we were watching the fireworks when paul asked me. one year ago, on canada day, we moved to saskatoon. we could see the fireworks from the highway driving in at night.

today, on canada day, there’s an article about me in the saskatoon star-phoenix! paul took my photo (you can almost see him reflected in the shiny desk lamp).

i was interviewed by steven ross smith back in april. he came to my apartment. the interview was supposed to take 90 minutes but we ended up talking for three hours. i’m not very good at talking about myself, expecially to someone i don’t really know, but it was fun talking to him. he was very pleasant.

he asked me a lot of questions about what kind of work i do. he also asked me what kind of artist i am. i didn’t really know what to say. i mostly just do things to amuse myself. i don’t have a particular concept that i’m trying to achieve. i just work on my technique, especially for drawing. i really don’t know what kind of artist i am. i’m not even sure that’s important. so it’s hard for me to answer questions like that.

the photo caption says “yuka yamaguchi is a conceptual artist, blogger, and new media artist”. i mostly use colour pencils and paper, so i thought i was old school. but i guess i do use a digital camera…

the interviewer seemed to think this entire website is art. he even thought the giant pink grapefruit jello i made was an art project. that’s quite flattering, but honestly, it was just me wanting to fulfill a lifetime dream: to make a giant pink jello. maybe it is art, i don’t know, but i didn’t intend it to be art, just fun. in the end, it was jello — high-fibre jello. it really was a lot of work to eat it all.

overall, i’m very happy with the article. i think the interviewer tried very hard to understand me — it’s not his fault that my ideas aren’t very clear. i’m also proud to be in a canadian newspaper as an immigrant from japan on canada day. i like meeting other immigrants here: today i had coffee with a couple from iran. we talked about iran and japan and canada, and many different soccer games, including the thrilling england-portugal penalty kicks today. another nice canada day.