The Adventure in Japan Part 2 : Painting Commission and More...

So the latter half of my trip was begun with a painting commission for a native New Yorker.  My friend I-Am-Jesse, a killer DJ who has resided in Japan for many years now, hit me up around the same time I was contacted by Ken South Rock to make a painting for his amazing Shibuya apartment.  I crashed at my good friends Frankie and Emi's house for a couple days near Shinjuku as I began to work on the piece, and then made it over to Jesse's in Shibuya to finish.  Upon completion my last few days in Japan were numbered and the insanity ensued.  The latter half of the trip was full of art making, book buying, amazing food, awesome city lurking, people watching, mad partying, building new relationships with some amazing artists, spending time with really good old friends, and all around general mayhem.  I was even introduced to a group of artists who run an alternative space called Spes-Lab in Ebisu, Tokyo, and was coincidentally invited to come back in the Spring to rock a solo venture at the space.  I was dumbfounded, honored, intimidated, and pretty much floored when I was asked to do this, as I have always wanted to have something like this come about and had never imagined it would be this soon.  Big thank you to everyone and everything that made this experience possible.  It was amazing.

The video store near Frankie and Emi's crib was pretty cool.  I was into the character design on this one and...

I found John Rambo in Japan.  Japambo!  Then I found the "adult section"  holy shit, craziness.  Also they have some truly bizarre and intense porn out there...

This temple is right down the street from Frankie and Emi's place.  One of the most amazing things about cities like Tokyo is that you are bombarded with a truly modern even futuristic high tech setting all the time.  Yet every few blocks you are reminded of the city's rich, thousands of years of history shown in structures and places like this amidst the Blade Runneresque developments.

Super sick monk statue at a temple in the middle of Tokyo.

Temple Graveyard near Frankie and Emi's.

So after the graveyard it was time to get to work and start painting my commission...

Commission Painting Stage one at Frankie and Emi's House.

And then...

So I got the back ground worked up to where I really liked it at Frankie and Emi's place.  Honestly once I got it to this point, I seriously considered not taking it any further for I felt I had never gotten an abstract piece to this level before and really questioned letting it just be.  It felt good to just sit there and stare at and it felt balanced, so I took a break and distracted myself with other things like...

Talking deliriously to Emi's stuffed animal friends, like this pig, and...

Watching Frankie and Emi come in from the hottest fucking day of all time and totally zone out on the couch as the air conditioner cooled them down to "human" levels.

Then it was time to get on the bus to go to DJ I-Am-Jesse's crib and finish working on this piece.

I had to get some sushi before I got back to work.  This was a wopping $7. True Talk.

I-Am-Jesse's crib in Shibuya, sickkkk!

Sayin cheese for my own lens.

So after a lot of pondering, a lot of reference research, and a lot of plain old compositional thinking, I started putting down line work.  It literally took about three hours of looking and adjusting the direction and order of the two panels to finally make my first marks.

Work table in full effect.

And boom, just about finished product.

Detail.

Right Panel Detail

Right Panel Detail

Finished Paintings.

What a view from I-Am-Jesse's Crib.  Talk about an amazing place to make art!

Shake Weight is even weirder in Japan!  Japanese TV time.  The pieces are still "Untitled"  but they as a Diptych should just be called "Dream Adventure" because that's what this trip was. Each Panel was about 2'x3' and the paintings were a mixture of spray paint, house paint, and plastic model kit enamel. Here are a couple more shots.

Left Side Panel "Things Do What They Will" I think I should call it.

And the right panel should be called "Learning How to Fill My Lungs".

So the night I finished the commission we went out on the town, and we ended up at the amazing Spes-Lab.

Next Post to Come.  Japan part 3!!! The final installment, Spes-Lab, Yoyogi Park, and getting weird all the way to Haneda airport.

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.