#itazu

Cats are great. And Stormyis an amazing name for a cat.

Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai) BHP visiting their printmaking department, were Satoru Itazu of itazulitho fame is teaching. Will try to not write half a book for once. Enjoy the pics - on them you see: 1. The litho shop with their Shin Nihon Zokei litho presses. Grad students work on grained aluminum plates and stones. 2. Small glimpse of the western side of the woodblock printing shop. Seperate post will come about that section later on. I tried to memorize / write down the names of everyone I met, but failed to do so horribly. The student printing monotypes on fabric is Shunichi Iwata. 3. Hmm. 4. Fernando Saiki showing me some sweet details on a print he pulled from an ancient block. 5. Sweet shop knife. 6. Satoru and Felicia on one of the shops many (six I think, possibly even more) smaller presses, this one set up for plates with a cast iron backer. 7. Checking out students’ plates. I forgot the gentleman’s name whose plate is shown (part of a dyptich), the student to his left is Mie Irokawa, some of her beautifully detailed litho work can be seen at Bumpodo Gallery, opening this weekend (18th of July, 17-19h. Cu there!) 8. Make sure your shop has a good filtration system. Otherwise printmaking gunk reaches the ocean and ends up in whales. I guess that’s what this note above the sink says. WHALE FRIENDLY LITHO! 9. Must photograph cabinet. Japanese tusche crayons, Japanese inks - always happy to see shops stocking materials I don’t know yet. 10. Press detail. Bc I know you’re nerds.

Your weekend printmaking meditation is provided by ITAZU Satoru of itazulitho fame, printing works by Japanese sculptor MAEDA Noriaki (link). The video is a couple of months old and will give you around 10min to marvel at small space shop set up, rollers, nice juicy black and at least in my case, thoughts drifted off to future projects of my own.. Enjoy! Itazu litho on FB: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Itazu-Litho-Grafik-TOKYO/183421985108532

If you've sat there like me, patiently watching him grain his stone for 3:28, then you have the makings of a true lithography nerd.

Side note: The man in the video is Satoru ITAZU, he runs the Tokyo-based ITAZU Litho-Grafik printshop. You can check out his website here: http://www.annie.ne.jp/~itazu He's super friendly, and has been super busy too, the printshop is up and running since 1987. I've emailed him a couple of months ago when he uploaded what I still think of as the best lithography videos to youtube, a series of 33 videos without moderation, smartly annotated, showing the entire process of printing a stone lithography. (Link to #1/33: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BAASXUd0Ws)

Of course there are new and cool printmaking videos being uploaded every day, but Mr. Itazu's videos are top notch, and the one I included above beautifully illustrates why. So if you have a youtube account, go there and subscribe to the man, like his stuff, email him fangirl pics, whatever - his videos deserve way more views than they have now.