Who is Hyougushi?

Today I became interested in who Hyougushi is, where he is from, and where I can send the book to, so the Librarian in me did a little Internet digging. From Hyougushi’s Flickr profile page I discovered:

1. Hyougushi is a man and his name is Hideyuki Kamon (I think??).
2. He has a blog (and with the help of the wonky Google Translator I was able to piece together a lot!)
3. He works as a paper hanger/picture framer. This was neat to learn because like me, he also works with paper (making traditional Japanese screens and scrolls, etc.), and
4. he enjoys Scouting.

I also found out the address of his business: Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture 665-0842, Japan 5-13-3 surface of the river (I’m guessing “surface of the river” means “on the river” – Google Translator is actually pretty bad!).

It was actually pretty easy to find all this info (which is kind of scary, because I know someone could probably do the same thing for me too!) but at least now I won’t have to email him in advance and ask him for his address, so sending him the book will be a complete surprise (if you are reading this please don’t spoil it by emailing him). I doubt it will be as easy to find contact info in the future for other book projects though.

Now, for some reason I feel like a stalker.

The Trouble With Paper in Regina

I started to find all of my materials yesterday for the project and I decided I’m going to make a criss-cross book (which I have never made before by the way) because I think the pictures will mesh well together in this format, but what do I know!

I wanted to use a piece of black chiyogami paper for the front and back covers, I have some at home but I won’t have enough for two copies, so I think I’m just going to have to end up using just plain black paper – it’s too bad though, Hyougushi is Japanese so I though it would be fitting to use some nice chiyogami, if I lived back in Toronto still I wouldn’t have a problem, the Paper Place has everything you could ever want in terms of paper, but here in Regina, there is a lack of all artist’s supplies in my opinion, it’s even hard to find nice/reasonably priced mat board.

But after work today I stopped at the Paper Umbrella because I haven’t been there in years and I found out that you can order items in from Toronto, so that’s what I did. Only problem is – now I have to wait one to two weeks for my paper to come in. It’s going to be very nice, a black Tairei paper with silver flecks.

I also figured out all of the dimensions and printed off the images onto some white card stock. So far, so good!

The Begining…

Last Friday I got my membership newsletter from CBBAG, I read it and noticed that there was a call for submissions from the Arts on Atlantic Gallery in Calgary, AB for book works loosely based on the theme of “flight”. Now, I must admit, I haven’t done ANY bookbinding since I moved back home to Saskatchewan from Toronto, I guess I was just waiting for some inspiration – and so, I thought about “flight” over the next couple of days. Humm, flight=birds-kites-bees-airplanes, yadayadayada… I couldn’t think of anything interesting or creative enough to be call “art” and I by no means consider myself an artist!

Anyway, I’ve been working on a web 2.0 project at work recently, it’s kind of like an online tutorial for web 2.0 newbies modeled after this original Learning 2.0 project. So, I took something from that and started to search images in Flickr to see if I could find an image that would inspire me to greatness! Nothing really caught my eye until a series of photos of airline food by Hyougushi started showing up in my results. “Wow, those are really neat! That guy must really fly a lot, and love the aesthetic of airline food – or get really bored on airplanes” I though to myself.

Hummm, now this really got my gears going! I though about the Post Secret blog and how much I liked it, how it was a good example of collaborative web 2.0 art. What if I did the opposite of that? Instead of having people send me things – “I” would do the sending!

So that is exactly what I am going to do! Print off Hyougushi’s images of airline food from Flickr and make them into a book! For you copyright pundits out there, Hyougushi actually has his pictures under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license that allows me to do this. So, I’m going to make three copies, one to send to him, one for the exhibition, and one for me. Once it’s done, I’ll contact him and tell him about my project, hopefully he’ll like it and allow me to send him a copy.

I’m not sure if there are any other projects out there like mine, but if you know of any please let me know!! I’d like to start a blogroll.