![[Photos of the Powell Street Festival]](../../images/p-season.jpg)
2006–2007 Season
![[Between What’s Said and Unsaid]](../../images/p-bwsau.jpg)
Powell Street Festival Society & Helen Pitt Gallery present
Between What’s Said and Unsaid: A drawing show by Nikkei artists
August 4–17, 2007
Helen Pitt Gallery, 102–148 Alexander Street
Opening, Friday, August 3, 2007 at 7 pm
Artist talk: August 4, 2–3 pm, moderated by artist, Sonja Ahlers
Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 12–5pm,
also open on Sunday, August 5th for the Festival.
Information: 604.683.8240
Between what’s said and unsaid is an exhibition of drawings by a younger generation of Nikkei (Japanese descent) artists from Canada, USA, and Japan. This show looks at drawing as storytelling, drawing as exploration, drawing as play. From the narrative of graphic novels to more elusive suggestions of story, common threads appear. These are stories of youth and coming of age, glimpsed in small epiphanies and day-to-day moments. Ranging from melancholy to more playful, the works evoke a nostalgic sensibility. The medium of drawing has an immediacy and accessibility suited to this exploration of subtle emotions and discoveries. This exhibit plays a very important role in the overall theme of the 2007 Festival, which is Asobi (play), an exploration of creativity and experimentation.
Curated by PSF programming committee member Alia Nakashima, the show features Kaori Kasai (Japan), R. Kikuo Johnson (USA), Jillian Tamaki (Calgary/NYC), Cindy Mochizuki (Vancouver) and Madoka Hara (Vancouver). There will be an artist talk featuring the Canadian artists on opening day, Saturday, August 4 at 2 pm.
About the Artists
Cindy Mochizuki is a visual artist working in video, installation, audio, drawing, text, webworks and collaboration. Her current body of work examines history, memory and trauma by working with ideas that counter-monumentalize history and war. Her work has been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally.
Madoka Hara moved to Canada from Japan in 1998 after completing study in Child Education. Her self-taught drawing skill and craft-loving spirit brought her to an Interactive Media program to produce online storybook. Some of her animations have been shown at Powel Street Festival and related events, and her illustrations have been published in the Vancouver Review as well as used in Vancouver New Music promotional materials.
Jillian Tamaki graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2003. Her illustrations have been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Maclean’s, CBC, The Walrus, National Geographic Adventure, and many other publications around North America. In October 2006, Conundrum Press (Montreal) published a compilation of comics, published and unpublished work entitled “Gilded Lilies”.
R. Kikuo Johnson was born in 1981 on the island of in Maui. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, he moved to Brooklyn, New York where he currently draws comics and plays the ukulele. Some of his clients include The New Yorker, The New York Times, Premiere Magazine, Nickelodeon and more.
Kaori Kasai is an artist in motion. She graduated from art school in Tokyo and had since lived in San Francisco, Hong Kong, Vancouver, and now back in Japan, where she creates her own world of illustrated creatures, androgynously multiplying across the boundaries.
Curator: Alia Nakashima is an animation producer and graduate of Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. She has been involved with the Powell Street Festival since 1994 as a volunteer and board member.
Media contact: Miko @ Diane Kadota Arts Management @ 604.683.8240 or miko at dkam.ca
The Powell Street Festival Society gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, Department of Canadian Heritage, Province of BC through the British Columbia Arts Council and Direct Access to Charitable Gaming, City of Vancouver and The Hamber Foundation.