Onward!

Man, life comes at you fast.  I feel like yesterday I had just gotten back from Japan and I was trying to get back in the swing.  In what feels like no time I have grown a lot as a person and an artist, I have walked through a lot of things with my head still attached and my feet still on the ground (loosely lol), and am still completely charged and stoked about the future and my present being on this planet with all of ya'll.  I am getting really amped up about the SFMOMA project coming up, largely because I received a studio visit and real deal critique from Renee DeCosio (program director for the SFMOMA Artist Gallery) who came through with the awesome Alfonso Cosio recently.  Man it was the best, most honest, intriguing, to the point, helpful, and explorative, no kid gloves critique I have had in a longgg time (since Pratt actually).  It gave me some new juice to make an incredibly in depth new series for the first installment of the SFMOMA windows in June (also part of the Yerba Buena Alliance art walk) where I am really exploring some foundations, the origin and the architecture of the Astroknots, and by doing so really revisiting and dealing with a lot of things that were going on when I first moved to California in 2006.  I have really dove deeply back into process and am exploring some of my core basics and letting things happen without a presumed outcome again.  I am quite honestly the happiest I have been making art in a long time in creating these new pieces and the series that I see coming from it.

With amazing art work generally comes a lot more under the surface.  Of course this comes at a time when things in my personal life are pretty intense, yet I do feel my feet are still planted firmly on the earth.  It is amazing to feel such a sense of presence and compassion for things happening that I am involved with that the old me would have reacted to out of serious personal fears and insecurities, but rather now see how I can help and how I can maintain my balance in the face of some heavy stuff.  To everyone in my life right now I say with huge words, I love you all and you are all very dear to me, thank you all for being you and exploring life here with me and not being afraid to get real with those you care about.  And to finish this one off, I am going to Japan for my residency in less than two months.  I will be doing a six day meditation pilgrimage before I get to work in Tokyo for three weeks!  It's going to be, as Kenichi Minami from Ken South Rock says, a Huge Volcano!

Japan Was Major! Ken South Rocks Hardest!

Ken Minami at 5 am, Haneda Airport Train Station. The Journey Begins.

I was on tour with the amazingly talented, hard working, and inspiring duo of Ken Minami and Adam Amram, known as Ken South Rock recently.  In one of the most surprising events I have ever experienced, I was asked to go on tour with them in the end of 2011, that tour being in July 2012.  They proposed that I come on the road with them armed with pain, markers, and my enthusiasm and energy, and make a live painting on stage while they performed at every show I was there for.  They asked me to be a hype mane, dance, sing back ups some times, and make awesome art onstage while being crazy.

Adam Amram, John Felix Arnold III, and Ken Minami, in Kyoto @ Dewey Live House. 07/24/2012

These are all things that come very naturally to me, so I happily obliged.   Aside from the three of us, Ken's awesome wife Chiaki (who was like out translator and our therapist lol) came along and an amazing photographer named Walter Wlordrzyck to document the adventure. We traveled from Tokyo to Kamisuwa to Gifu to Nagoya to Osaka to Kyoto and then I embarked back to Tokyo to work on a different project in Shibuya as they continued on further south.  I believe they are in Taiwan at the time of this blog post, and all I can say is that these guys go hard as fuck and that it was truly an honor to be a part of such an amazing happening.

Temple Detail near Ken and Chiaki's Apartment, near Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Every single city was awesome, each having a speciality food they are known for.  As I peered out of the windows of many trains we took along the journey, I was ceaselessly bombarded with sublime, and serene countryside, mountain scape, village to town to city views, and a non stop show of visual amazement.  The lushness and glow of the green in the mountain side views is no where close to being replicated in these images.

Out of the train window on our way to Gifu from Kamisuwa.

We ate amazing food that, to my surprise, came from convenience stores, mini marts, hole in the wall train station cookeries, 7/11s and more.  We laughed a lot, we tried to sleep, we even were enswathed by scores of school girls in the train cars that had no idea of where we had come and what we were doing, but were none the less totally blown away by the whole thing.  I have so much more to tell you guys, and so many photos I have to go through, but here is a good lead in blog post to begin to get the whole memory of this truly surreal experience into your eyes, and a good chance for me to begin regrouping and figuring out whats next after such an amazing experience.

School Girl Mob on the Train traveling from Gifu to Nagoya.

The Beautiful Yui from Suichu Blanco, the awesome band we went on Tour with.

I can't lie, I am kind of depressed on the daily that I am not there anymore, that I am surrounded by insane amounts of American over consumption,  Escalades and Hummers driving by with one person inside, by a culture that revels in "fucking shit it up" just for the sake of doing so, and an overwhelming sense of people trying to get over on one another where, "its not my problem" is the motto.

The amazing Chiaki "Cheese" Minami and Walter Wlodarcyck on a train headed for Osaka.

Gyoza in Nagoya.

I love my country and I love my group of people that I am in the struggle with, but there are a lot of things I now realize that I am not okay with since I have gained some perspective. The food thing is also killing me.  I ate so much healthy food, even literally from convenience stores, that tasted so good, with no growth horomones or anything, and now it is hard to get used to that food coma feeling I get here in the states after eating even small things.  I have a lot of material to get back in the studio with now!  I am very grateful for that!

Super Awesome Street Festival, I beleive part of the beginning of a month long festival to honor the dead in Osaka.  This was right in the middle of an intersection.

Oh, and Osaka was definitely my favorite city hands down all around.  The food is unbelievable.