A couple of weeks ago Mewby and I went up to Kitayama to hang out for an evening at Joel Stewart’s studio. We had a long chat about his life and experiences here in Japan, and about his art, and he asked us to help him choose a picture that he was going to submit for this year’s 京展 (Kyoten) at Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. It was a very nice evening and later on he introduced us to Brown’s, a British style pub with great food, and a very cozy ambience – I’ll write more about that in a later post though. Joel had told us he would have an exhibition at the end of the year here in Kyoto, so prior to that we will do a full interview with him here on Deep Kyoto. However, in the meantime, I am happy to say that his piece has been selected for this year’s Kyoten!
Kyoten, if you don’t know, is the annual comprehensive art show organized by Kyoto City at Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art and this is its 80th year. They have western style painting, Japanese style painting, crafts, prints and calligraphy. Joel submitted a work that juxtaposes abstract work with a more concrete image – energizing both!
Here are the exhibition details:
Dates: July 3 (Wednesday) －July 19 (Friday)
Place: Main Hall North 1F, The Large Exhibition Room, and all of the 2F rooms at Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art
Open: 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (admission until 4:30 p.m.)
Location: Jingumichi in Okazaki, not far from Heianjingu Shrine. Here is a map.
And here we are being silly in front of one of Joel’s beautiful screens:
They don’t exhibit screens at Kyoten, so the work he has there is much smaller but if you are interested, you can read more about Joel’s five year folding screen installation project, “Crossroads” in his own account here:
Crossroads: How to arrange 60 paintings in a Fushimi Warehouse
And also follow Joel’s page on Facebook here: Joel Stewart Art.