Just letting it stew

I have not left Japan yet, but I have started to reflect over my experiences here. Just as a pot of stew will simmer on the stove so my thoughts and memories are simmering in the back of my mind.

I set out on this trip with very high hopes and expectations. I was hoping and believing that I would see extraordinary art education here in the land whose art inspired the likes of Van Gogh and Gauguin among others. I also started out on this trip with a broken arm that was more of a hindrance than I was willing to admit.

I toured the elementary school and found that there was no art specialist on campus and that art was only taught on Monday and then only two of the grade levels took part. I need to note here that the school was very small. There were only 101 students. A budget that supported a separate art teacher was probably not a possibility. The head principal at the school is a master calligrapher. Calligraphy is an art form in its own right and this man is most certainly an artist. In the course of a lesson in the school garden where the students raise vegetables, they came back inside and drew themselves in the garden.

In the Junior High I saw some lovely work. Students worked from photographs. I did see beautiful examples of color exercises and, a couple of days previously, we had run into some of these same students painting along the river in Sawara. The book on the teacher's desk was Johannes Itten's color text. This is one of the books that I use at home in the United States.

When I traveled through Europe I finally understood why the various painters from the Renaissance to the impressionists painted as they did. They were capturing their environment in two dimensions. The quality of light, the land, the plants, the sense of place are there because this is where they worked, this is what they saw.

As I write this I am thinking of Monet and his Japanese bridge, Monet whose work was inspired in part by Japanese woodblock prints. Monet has been big news this week when his painting of waterlilies sold at auction for a record $80 million.

In my mind's eye I see the iris festival that I was privileged to visit twice during this trip.

I let my mind wander to the almost tactile sensation of crossing beneath a Tori gate and entering the quiet beauty of the forest as I approach a Shinto shrine.

The smell of earth and trees warmed by the sun while I walk through cool green shade past pools of koi and turtles. The wisps of incense carried on a breeze.

I long to see more Japanese art created by Japanese art teachers and their students. I know that several of my colleagues said they saw a great deal more than I did. I wish that I could tour Japan looking at the school art rooms across the country.

This trip has taught me a great deal, but it has also highlighted how little I know.

I am waiting to have time to reflect over my experiences here. I hope to correspond with both my Japanese and AmericanI. Maybe in this way I'll find answers to the questions that I have.

Perhaps there is some way to collaborate between our art classrooms using the internet, something more than showing student work in an online gallery, something somehow interactive that allows the students and the art teachers to establish a dialogue across the Pacific.

I need to say thank you to the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund and the Japanese government for making it possible for me to take this trip. So many people did so much to make this trip a possibility. Thank you all!