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Eleven…and Counting
My friend, Megumi, shared a post on Facebook this morning that began〈断水11日目〉which is “11th day without water.” Has it really been that long? I checked the calendar. Yes, it has. That means it’s been 11 days without Internet at home, too. I would have guessed six days. Time is weird when patterns are disrupted. I…
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Oyama Water Woes
I believe it will be a while before we have running water at 555 again. The landslide near Oyama Fudoson took out a road, the power poles, a cell tower, the gigabit fiber cable, and the entire Oyama area water supply. The water supply is the biggest problem right now. This morning we got notification…
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Typhoon 25, rain edition
I wrote a long blog post about the aftermath of the typhoon, but it was boring. The details on the ground are interesting to me right now but not to you. So here are highlights with photos. tl;dr: We are fine. The cats are fine. 555 is fine. Life is inconvenient without water, Internet or…
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After the rain
Yesterday our rain gauge captured a record amount of daily rain, 179.9mm. It wasn’t a typhoon, but a hard, steady rain all day long. Around town there were floods and landslides causing road closures until they were cleared. Landslide evacuation level 4. Perhaps an abundance of caution, but after last month’s linear rainband causing 8…
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Turmeric Anthotypes and beyond
In about 6 weeks, I will be leading a workshop featuring “nature art” at the Oyama Senmaida harvest festival. Last year we explored a variety of ways to get color from plants and earth. This year, something different: anthotypes. (antho, flower + type, print) It’s a fancy word for capturing shadows by sun-bleaching botanical emulsions.…
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Camera Roll
Another couple of months in photos from my Instagram Stories. Week by week the seasons change while daily life remains “same-same but different.” Scroll to see nature (including my best ever photos of a snail and a grasshopper) and art. Always plenty of cats.
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Late Summer in Inaka
Every summer on the 2nd Saturday of August, seven local temples parade their mikoshi to Oyama Fudoson to pray for rain to swell the rice before harvest. I think it worked this year. We’ve had rain. A lot of rain. Earlier this week, Typhoon 15 made landfall in Ibaraki prefecture and also dropped a heavy…
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Festival Spider
When my sister read my previous post, she wrote some encouragement to me. Not a classic “you can do it” message, instead it reframed my perception of my role at Kozuka Art Festival. You are the spider of the festival. You have put yourself in a shady spot where there are trees and tenderness to…
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Kozuka Art Festival 2026 (first half)
Art festival in the forest! A magical week full of artists arriving and displaying their wares and their work. Restaurants come to us on a daily rotation. There are performances and impromptu encounters. Workshops, crafts for sale, art on display. It’s very cool. But from my point of view, its been a lonely four days.…
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Inserting My Voice in Art Writing
When I write my workbooks for Drawing Meditations, I make them more like a series of worksheets than a book: spare and succinct with emphasis on instructions over descriptions of the outcome. It clearly reflects how I teach art. My teacher’s instinct is to let the student discover their own path to creative insights. I…
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