Contact: Kenneth Billings
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A centuries-old type of Japanese brush painting will be on display for the first time to the American public during a Feb. 25-March 21 exhibition at Mississippi State.
Artist Tsugako Shimada will be in attendance for opening events in Giles Hall, home of the College of Architecture, Art and Design.
Titled "Tsugako Shimada Suiboku-Ga Ten," the month-long display in the building's main gallery of her Suiboku-Ga, or sumi-e, creations is being sponsored by the university's art department, Starkville Area Arts Council and Starkville art patrons Robert and Lucy Phillips. A public reception in Shimada's honor will be held in the gallery 5:30-7:30 p.m. on the 28th.
Additionally, Shimada will demonstrate her techniques on the 27th during a 3:30-5 p.m. program also open to the public in 122 Giles, the Fazio Jury Room.
The exhibition features large paper screens and framed images of vast seasonal landscapes.
"Sublimity and serenity are moods achieved by Mrs. Shimada's virtuosic performances of hand, mind and heart," said art professor Brent Funderburk. "The works represent dramatic but tranquil visions of the interaction between natural and manmade environments in her native Japan."
Lucy Phillips, a personal friend and student of Shimada, said this particular art form "is almost inaccessible to foreigners." Students must apprentice themselves to a teacher, with the techniques passed down through generations only from personal instruction, she explained.
The 78-year-old artist is much recognized and honored in her homeland. From 1981-2006, she has received 10 top prizes in the annual Yogen Suiboku-Ga Association exhibition at the Tokyo Art Museum.
Phillips said she gained rare access to Suiboku-Ga during the couple's recent three-year residence in Tokyo, where her husband, an MSU professor emeritus of English, was teaching at Meisei University. "I was spellbound by the art," she admitted.
Lucy Phillips' love and respect for the art form was so strong that she subsequently earned a top prize for one of her paintings--the first foreigner to gain that distinction.
As a gift to MSU, Shimada, who is traveling with an interpreter, is assuming the travel and exhibition shipping costs associated with her campus visit.
First developed in ancient China and using only black ink, sumi-e is a monochromatic painting style also referred to in English as brush painting and wash painting. It is created with an ink stick, or sumi, made from soot of burned pine tree roots that is mixed with a gelatin-like substance extracted from animal skin and bones, then compressed and fired in a kiln.
"Grinding the ink, you begin to prepare your mind," Phillips recalled recently while explaining the intense concentration that's required. The work is completed with bamboo brushes, or fude, made from the hair of a sheep, deer or other animal, she said.
Shimada began studying Suiboku-Ga in 1975 and eventually came under the tutelage of "Oo-Sensei" (big teacher) Haruka Morimoto. She remained both student and assistant until Morimoto's death in 2004.
Suiboku-Ga was carried to Japan in the mid-14th century by Buddhist monks and has become a deeply ingrained cultural art form among the Japanese. The tools of the artists have remained virtually unchanged over the centuries and the techniques and styles of each teacher represent his or her own style of painting.
Viewers often say the style provides feelings of serenity and calm with a sense of the importance of air and space within the work, all of which subtly reveal Zen Buddhist influences tied to the art.
For more information about the special MSU exhibit, telephone the art department at 662-325-2970.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.