227. refresh

On Saturday, 4th July, I went to Q-TA's collage workshop, I've been wanting to go to something art related to get to know more artists for a while now. It was a nice change of "scenery". After going to his exhibition in May, I really enjoyed his work more. Surprisingly, the venue for the workshop was somewhere really near Harajuku. He started with giving a talk about how he create his work, I could hardly make out what he was saying because it was very in depth Japanese. He handed us our materials and we started doing our work after his talk, he told us to cut out the pictures we liked best and collage them together to create something.

At the end of it, everyone showed their works and he talked about each one of our works individually. It reminded me of being in art college when we had critique class every Wednesday. I felt a little nostalgic.

After the workshop was over, we went to a nearby izakaya for dinner. It was nice to get to talk to other artists, thankfully there were a girl and a guy who could speak english very fluently because of living abroad. I was a little hesitant on going at first because of the language barrier but I'm glad I forced myself to go. We all introduced ourselves and all that, when it was my turn I said I liked Japanese music and Q-TA (everyone calls him Q-san or Q-TA (not T-A- but ta) asked who, I said THE NOVEMBERS and to my surprise, he said he did the artwork as collaboration with tobird on their album cover for zeigiest. He gave me some good advice on getting creative jobs and about art. It's good to network and for me, he suggested since I like music, I should get to know more bands and people who work with bands as well. Also to never stop creating because once you stop, you'll find it very hard to start again. Which is really really true for me. It's best to create something everyday. Also, he noticed my phone wallpaper is Aquirax Uno's work.

He was asking me to show him some of my works and said that I should add something interesting or weird to make paintings to let the viewer ask "why?", much like Aquirax Uno's work. It would also be more engaging and interesting. I don't know if I would do that but it is definitely something to think about. I wish I could understand more Japanese because after that he was giving even more good advice to everyone and it was very depth. 

After we were done with dinner, we all went to a nearby karaoke. I wasn't that into it but thought it would be rude to leave since no one else was leaving. So I just sat there and watched people sing as usual. I don't really enjoy karaoke honestly, unless the people I'm going with are singing music I like, lol. It was quite fun tho, since most of them sang Japanese music and anime songs. 

All in all, I felt productive and hopefully I'll get to attend more art-related things like this in future. I haven't been collaging for a really long time (4, 5 years?), and going to this workshop was refreshing for me. I hope to add some collage elements into my future work.

This piece he posted today on his account was done at the workshop!

And mine... it's not as minimalistic.