Paper Artist

Yesterday, Tetsu took me to an exhibit being held at one of the department stores in the next city over.  Often the better Japanese department stores will have event rooms where different exhibits will be displayed for a couple of weeks throughout the year.  Yesterday's diorama exhibit (tickets are sold at the door) was held by the paper artist, Takashi Ota.  SPECTACULAR!!!  I can't say when I've enjoyed looking at something so much!  And we were allowed to take photos!!!  A double enjoyment!

 

I got up close for most of my photos just because I wanted to capture the DETAIL given.  Some of the dioramas were in acrylic boxes, which were a bit harder to photograph, but some were really within reaching distance (but NO TOUCHING) and I could get practically into the scene itself.  But still, photos do not convey the detail in each work of art.  Every little thing in the dioramas are made of paper.  I mean, the lettering on the t-shirts, the background.  Everything!  There is nothing drawn! And the dimension is amazing!

 

You can see, that the top photo is just a small clip of the larger diorama.  Maybe the story is supposed to be of tourists in their modern sports car stopping to take a cell phone picture in front of an old traditional hot spa.  Children and their father are hurrying to go take a bath, a young couple are double riding a bicycle, people are sitting at the curb chatting, a delivery boy is making the rounds delivering bottles of beer on his bicycle.  Old and new mixed together.

 

This gives you an idea of the size of the dioramas...  I could hardly show how beautiful each of them were if I were to try to get the whole scene into one picture.  So all the rest of the pictures I took are close-ups... one tiny part of the story taking place in each diorama.  If you feel inclined, click on my photos and you can get even closer into the scenes.

Even those stones in the wall are each made of paper.

 

The artist did a lot of scenes from nostalgic Japan, but he has traveled the world and put famous cities and scenery to paper too.  I think this is supposed to be from somewhere in Italy...  I wanted to show how each of the letters on that sign is cut out of paper also.

I think the artist started out making paper car dioramas and most of the ones we saw yesterday had a car or vehicle of some sort in the scene.  And almost every scene had a dog or two in it also.

 

 And it really was amazing to see the expression on each figure's face.  Remember... these are all TINY!!!

 

I liked shot of the high school baseball player (talking to a high school girl in uniform) because the figure has his name, Watanabe, on his baseball uniform.  (Our last name is Watanabe.  This might have been Tetsu in his baseball playing days.)

 

So many dogs in all the dioramas, but this sweetheart was the closest to Choco that I could find.  Yeah.. that looks a bit like a Dalmation (and Choco isn't a true Dalmation anyway.)

 

And this scene made me laugh out loud!  Now those are obviously American children on an American school bus!

And I found this video on the Internet.  Check out how a photographer uses lighting to change the mood of each of the scenes.