The World of Joyce Kamikura

Life Drawing BBQ 2011

2011-09-04T20:55:00.000-07:00

This year's belated BBQ event for the Life Drawing group was held on Sep.3, with no model. A small group got together and had a lot of fun just socializing in my backyard.

Geneva to Sweden

2011-09-04T20:07:00.000-07:00

July and August in Europe.

UN, Geneva

With Ronny's family

Lysekil

We visited Vivienne and Ronny, our daughter and her fiancee in Geneva, Switzerland in their lovely new home. Our first visit was to the UN, Geneva where Ronny works. From Geneva, four of us drove through Germany, and Denmark to Sweden, to a beautiful resort town called Lysekil on the west coast of Sweden (Ronny’s home town).

We took a night ferry from Puttgarten, Germany to Denmark, then a long bridge to Sweden. Much of northern Europe was quite cool and rainy. That is, until we took another ferry, this time a short one, and got to a small picturesque resort town of Lysekil. We were met with extremely and unusually hot weather (around 30-40C) there and throughout the region. A short boat ride from there is another beautiful and charming resort town of Fiskebackskil. We took a longer excursion to a tourist town of Smogen, famous for shrimp. And of course our lunch was, as you can guess.....shrimp. All around the area is true fjord: a long, narrow inlet with steep sides and sometimes barren cliffs, unlike the familiar BC west coast scenery we are used to. For five days we’ve met some wonderful people and ate Sweden’s savory seafood.

Smogen, Sweden

Lysekil

Gerald and Philippe

Our return trip to Geneva was uneventful with rain much of the way. The highlight of it though, was a beautiful overnight ferry from Trelleberg, just south of Malmo in Sweden to Germany. The TT line ferry was much like a cruise ship feeling with beautiful cabins and luxurious lounges. Back in Geneva, we were treated to our friend’s sumptuous and magnificent dinner to end our visit to Europe.

October in Indianapolis

2010-10-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

It was our first trip to Indianapolis where our three grandchildren moved to, last December. Although the downtown core of the city is small, it sprawls far beyond what I had expected, with seemingly new buildings all around major city arteries. Apparently, it’s the 14th largest city in the US. The suburb of Carmel where we stayed is abound with beautiful mansions surrounded by large trees on their expansive lots with these trees giving out a constant rain of multi-colored leaves. Evergreens are more scarce than the westcoast. But broadleaves of all types were at their prime with grandiose range of autumn colors. We enjoyed our grandchildren in such a beautiful setting.

There are many places to see in Indianapolis, one of them being Indianapolis Museum of Art which is located in a large park and houses surprisingly large collection of European and American Art. I could have spent another day there.

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China/Tibet in September, 2010

2010-09-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

China/Tibet Sept 4-20, 2010

I've learned a lot about China. I was fascinated about changing landscapes, amazed about the government control of different phases of people's lives, impressed with acrobatic shows. Many many hard-to-believe things.... Eye-openers. My most dreaded expectations...dirty public toilets....were non-existent in most cases. I was pleasantly surprised how clean the cities were.

My China/Tibet trip started from Beijing under the sizzling temperature of 32°C in the vail of smog and pungent gas fume. The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square were not at all impressive except for its’ sizes. Miles of walking on concrete, going up and down on uneven steps in the uncomfortable climate in the polluted air made the visit unpleasant to say the least, relieved a little by clearer air at The Great Walls. Beijing and its’ nearby imperial city, Tenjin had some impressive aspects as well. The cities were CLEAN, with workers constantly picking garbage, cleaning and polishing floors etc, due to last year’s Olympics, I surmise.

Xian in the interior was just as hot. The Terra Cotta Museum was just stifling.

All was not bad. Seeing the gate in Xian where the Silk Road started was very interesting. As we flew to Lhasa, Tibet where we were welcomed with beautiful landscape of short vegetations hugging rugged rocks and semi-arid desert surrounding recently flooded Lhasa River. Again it was an unseasonably hot temperature from 29 -39°C during our 4 days there. Before Tibet, our guides during our visits to Beijing, Tenjin, and Xian continually emphasized money as an important goal in their lives. That is, until we reached Tibet. Tibetans’ main, if not the only, emphasis is Buddhism. They are distinctly different from Chinese. They are very gentle and obliging people with unique culture and language. Dalai Lama’s Potala Palace was impressive, but needing much maintenance. Official version of the population in Tibet is supposed to be 15% Chinese and 85% Tibetan. Obviously not so. Just by looking around, Chinese occupy much more than 50% of the population. Oppression and tight grip of the Chinese government over the Tibetan people and their culture is deeply felt by many Tibetans, majority of whom cannot get their Chinese passports. Today, Tibetan language is not totally erased, but plays a small and minor role in store and other signs.

From Lhasa, we flew to Chongqing where the Yantze River Cruise started. Chongqing is a city of 32 million people. Humidity, 34°C, pollution and the smell of the upper Yantze almost made me stay in the observation deck of the ship. But no. I’m there to experience and see China, so I went to the upper deck to see the dirty ochre Yantze gradually turn to moss green as we passed the Three Gorges. There are may evidences of farmlands and industries being submerged by the dam. Boatmen who used to manually guide ships before the dams were built, took us on one of the Yantze tributaries to see unusual rock formations and lush greeneries. Going through five lochs was interesting in that 5 ships formed a group in 2 rows to go down together. The Three Gorges Dam under construction is humongous.

Following 4 days and 3 nights on the River Cruise, we flew from Yichang to Shanghai, a totally different city from any other cities in China we saw, where rows and rows of rectangular box-like buildings are common. Shanghai has a variety of different shaped modern buildings combined with foreign influences made it a very unique look. Evidences of French, English and Italian concessions are still intact and made the city hold its unique place in the history of China.

I was taken aback by the image of Mao Tse Tung on every currency denomination. His large images is still facing The Tiananmen Square. A reverence for him is due in fact to a lack of knowledge on the part of Chinese populace about Mao’s elimination of a large number of educated, well-to-do, and political opponents. For that matter, they don’t seem to know much about The Tiananmen Massacre, either.

It was good to see China and Tibet. But it’s time to reflect on how lucky we are for what we have.

The Sakura Singers

2010-07-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

Here's my other artsy activity. I've been a mezzo in a choir group called The Sakura Singers Society in Vancouver for more than ten years, and at present is vice-president of the society, enjoying singing and doing what I can to help run the organization. The choir sings Japanese traditional and contemporary pieces. The society holds a major concert every other year usually performed at Michael J. Fox Theatre in Burnaby. There are many mini performances throughout the year. Their web site is http://www.thesakurasingers .org/

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the The Sakura Singers, we had just made a CD of all songs programmed for the anniversary concert. The recording took place at The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver. The CD's will be sold for $15.-. The choir's next biennial concert will be held in 2012.

Sculpting

2010-04-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

Great fun sculpting. Here's my first attempt with clay using no armature.

Life Drawing

2009-07-23T16:36:00.001-07:00

As an artist, I found figure drawings to be one of the disciplinary and challenging excercises towards see things in different ways. Figure drawing brings conscious awareness of a mystical relationship between the artist and the subject. At the same time, I'm aware of mentally shifting my mode of information processing between the right and the left sides of my brain. It is a concious excercise in shifting my mode of seeing and gathering information about a subject. Most of all, it's fun and I do this once a week for three hours with a number of artists who are also interested in the same pursuit.