Vancouver Art Book Fair part 2

The fair is now open and online all this weekend! I am participating with ArtByteCritique on a table around the middle. If you click here for the fair, and then click this little circle, you’ll find us…

Someone from the group will be online during the opening hours if you’d like to chat with us - just type into the chat box.

I’ve finally put some more of my work into my online shop, and the link from the VABF goes straight there. My hand-bound sketchbooks are available, as well as the little zines I made especially for this fair. I’ll keep some of the items available in my shop after the fair is over, but probably not my sketchbooks, which I’ll keep for the next special event!

Hope you’ll enjoy browsing the site and maybe grab yourself a zine or book or print!

Vancouver Art Book Fair

This coming week I will be taking part in the Vancouver Art Book Fair with my Tokyo art group Art Byte Critique.

One of the group members will always be available to live chat during the fair, and to purchase any of the work, there’s a link through to each artist’s online shop. I’ll be showing 2 new zines and a selection of my handmade sketchbooks:

This is a little limited edition zine I made with my black and white Night Garden extra prints - with added pochoir colour elements.

I also made an even smaller zine with my extra ‘leaf cloud puddle’ mokuhanga prints and added a tiny collage beetle onto the last page.

Both of the zines are in an edition of 10 pieces only. I love the feel of them all in a pile like this…

Hope to see you at the fair!

25 year anniversary!

This year is my silver jubilee of being a commercial illustrator! Twenty five years since I walked out of Central Saint Martins and started drawing for a living. I had planned to have an exhibition in HK to celebrate, but that’s on hold for now. So instead, I’m putting together a book, looking back at important projects and clients throughout my career so far, and posting on instagram as I go…

Sweet Anthology

Today I’m looking back at a project I did with a friend who set up a sweet company in the UK, over 10 years ago. The brand was called Sweet Anthology, and told the stories of the sweets, as well as packaging them up beautifully to sell.

I designed the brand logo, writing the name by hand and creating an illustration of classical looking mermaids creating the magic of sweets. I used bright candy colours to make everything look delectable.

The logo was printed on shiny stickers that were used to seal the sweet jars alongside colourful ribbons.

We then went on to create an incredible website that really worked well and was fun to browse. I made little illustrations to highlight the individual sweets.

Unfortunately the company didn’t last in the long term but I still look back on the project fondly as one of the most personal I’ve undertaken. I’m proud of the work we did!

COPE books on TV

This week, Mr Johnson Lo, Director, Hong Kong Jockey Club Disaster Preparedness Response Institute promoted the COPE Earthquakes and Tsunami books in Cantonese on RTHK.

During the interview Johnson highlighted the importance and attractiveness of the books in disaster education for students, teachers and parents, as well as showing the sorts of things you should have in your emergency bag.

You can watch the whole interview here. So happy we are getting the message out there!

my pinterest

I’ve always like the pinterest model of viewing and saving images, and have started keeping images of my own illustration work on several boards. It’s interesting to check out what’s been posted on the general Mariko Jesse illustration search …

as well as on my own specific themed boards.

Please take the time to browse, you might find something surprising!

charity auction piece

This week I had a small print in the artiststakeaction instagram charity auction. It raised money for COVID relief and racial justice. I’m glad I can help now and then, at least in a small way, to make the world a better place. Keep an eye out for future auctions, you may find something you like!

This is a section of my Night Garden mokuhanga print, in pale greens and pinks, on thick washi.

mise en scene project

The new project by my collaborative group wood + paper + box is ‘mise en scene’. We are each making work, sending it to each other, and then documenting it in a variety of arrangements that change with each additional piece that we make and receive. The coronavirus situation has affected what I can post, and our exhibition has now been postponed until early 2023 (!), but we continue to slowly work on our pieces…

My first print is a layered flower. For each of my prints in this project I have been thinking about the way scenery and props affect how we view a play, and translating these ideas into mokuhanga prints, playing with transparency, and layering.

These arrangements show the first prints of the project.

I stuck the prints onto my window for one of the arrangements, to show the light, as each of the prints had a translucent quality.

You can follow our collaboration on our instagram here.

SCMP article

There was an article about COPE and the author Martha Keswick in the South China Morning Post newspaper this week! Hope this will encourage everyone to go to the site and read the books…

Hong Kong ceramics

I love seeing my ceramics in use, so I’m sharing some instagram pics from a variety of sources - thank you to everyone who has sold, bought and loved my Hong Kong products!

This is my favourite by my old studio mates Bob Foundation. Miss them!

star light

The wood star light I designed for lightstylelondon features in their new A/W catalogue, which you can see here. Ah, Christmas is on the way already. Need to start thinking of Christmas card ideas…

my desk

I’m working from home, as alot of us are now, and I thought I’d do a little show and tell of how I’ve set everything up, and the things I surround myself with that inspire me…

my birthday

For the first time ever I couldn’t have a birthday party, so I decided that I would host a zoom with my friends around the world, and it worked out pretty well!

I actually had zooms for different time zones, and some of my friends who didn’t know each other finally met, and I loved seeing everyone’s faces! I also enjoyed a homemade cake and some wonderful gifts. It was a lovely day!

walk to work

Almost every day for the last two and half years I’ve walked to my studio in Tokyo, and while I enjoy it, I’ve never stopped to photograph the things I see on the way. As my time at this studio draws to a close, I’ve been appreciating the little things I now notice more and more. Here’s a selection of my photos from the last few weeks. Everything’s a little grey, as it was either raining, or just about to…

I love looking out for the weeds that sprout up in the summer, finding little nooks and crannies in walls to add a dash of beautiful green to the world.

And I really love this particular blue wall, and with the yellow crate, it’s perfection!

Japanese Paper Company

My friends have set up a new online store in Scandinavia selling Japanese washi paper. If you’re based anywhere in Europe, it will be a great resource. They came to visit us in Japan and went to visit all sorts of interesting paper manufacturers, big and small (I went with them to Ogawa, see one of my previous posts) and really got to know washi. They have featured some of my mokuhanga work in the gallery section of their site, and you can see some of the most interesting works with washi that I’ve made over the years…

sketching - indoor plants

I took part again in the first wednesday drawing day, and focused on our indoor plants. Here’s the plucky tomato plant growing from a little yoghurt pot…

and two leafy plants growing happily next to each other…

I drew it twice, once in pencil and once with watercolours…

It’s relaxing to stay in and draw for a change!

The Standard HK newspaper

The COPE COVID-19 picture book I illustrated was featured in the Goodies section of the HK newspaper The Standard recently. It’s really great that the message is going out to all the young people there!

Looks like there’s a pen that you can use that speaks out loud! I wish I could try it…

Hope you’re all wearing face masks and staying safe out there!

trees

I’ve been continuing my online art classes with my niece, and we spent 3 sessions working on watercolour techniques. We both drew trees. Here are a few of my progress shots:

I used watercolor for the background and tree trunks, and then decided to add colour pencil for the foliage…

The lessons are a great excuse for me to pick up actual tools and get away from photoshop!

St Lawrence University art collection

I’m happy to announce that two of my mokuhanga works have been acquired by the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery of St Lawrence University in the US for their permanent collection. Both are pieces from my Gardens series: the first is this accordion folded print entitled Into the Garden (blue).

The second print is my most recent, Night Garden, in pink and green. This was initially a back sumi ink print, but I did some experiments with colour, so this is a unique print.

They will also be available to see in the University’s digital archive. I hope mokuhanga students of the future will enjoy them!

first wednesday drawing day

I’ve been participating in the first wednesday drawing day that a group of wonderful artists and illustrators do in the UK. Everyone gets together in one place and draws, and then share the results in a fun discussion at the end of the day. I went to one in person last year, but since the lockdown, everyone has been drawing on their own, and then sharing the drawings over zoom, which meant to I could take part from here in Tokyo!

The first theme was ‘view from the window’ and I spent time drawing the Tokyo skyline visible from the living room…

The next theme was ‘food’, so I spent time in the kitchen drawing the shelves and loving the details on the packaging…

Unfortunately, due to the time difference I haven’t managed to stay awake to join the zooms yet, but we’ve been putting our drawings on the firstwednesdaydrawingday instagram, so we can share and enjoy our drawings. Take a look if you’re interested!

The next theme was ‘outside’ and I sat by a different window and tried some loose ink painting sketches…

This month was again ‘outside” and I went to the only open outside area near us, the Aoyama cemetery, and drew the overgrown tombstones and incredible greenery, and then this storage area for the buckets and brooms for cleaning the graves:

I was a quite bitten by the early summer bugs in the cemetery, so I might need to find somewhere else to draw next time! It’s always so good to get back to doing some real drawing with paper and pens, after such intense weeks of working on the computer…