Hiromi’s Blog

On the last weekend, Harper and I went to Iowa, and I gave a talk about Contemporary Japanese Art and Feminism for an ethnic studies class at Cornell College.  My dearest professor kindly invited me to give a talk, and I was so excited and a little bit nervous.

I haven’t seen my professor since I graduated from Cornell, and the last time when I visited campus was right before I moved back to Japan, so I was very excited to see her and visit Cornell.

We first went to Des Moines and stayed at Harper’s friend’s place and they took us out to a nice restaurant, and I had a strong martini which gave me headache next day, but it was tasty!!  That was Saturday, and on Sunday we drove to Cornell and checked in Brackett house which is a nice cute bed & breakfast on campus.  We went to Iowa city and had a nice dinner with my professor and on Monday I gave a presentation about a Japanese artist named Mariko Mori.

I was nervous for a few minutes, –according to Harper, I ummed a lot… but after that, I decided to concentrate on what I wanted to tell the audience and then I became fine.  There were a room full of people in the class room, but not so many, perhaps 30 people, so it was a good size.  Compared to the symposium at Cornell I did during my undergraduate, it was much more relaxed.  It was a part of my master’s thesis, so I really wanted people to understand my points.

I talked about how the artist creates layers to represent different worlds as one, and how her artworks evolved from criticism to integration using psychoanalysis and social/ traditional/ religious perspectives.  I sort of explained why her artworks became pop-like/ fantasy-like artworks through the evolution.

Mariko Mori’s art (link), especially her later works are hard to understand because they look like fairy tale worlds.  I think through my paper I wanted to explain why Japanese culture is unique, how traditional values and contemporary ideologies co-exist, and how that affects Japanese feminism.

It has been a few years since I completed my thesis, and this presentation reminded me of how hard I worked on my thesis, and how enjoyable it was because it was like a solving mystery problem.

I was once accepted in the phD program and the funding was canceled all of the sudden.  It was hurtful and since then I simply cannot think about art history much.  It became painful, but this time I truly enjoyed it.  I felt good about talking about art history.  Although my profession now is not art related, but I like what I do and I see how I can apply what I have learned through art history to my current work.  This somehow creates a good balance in me.

Cornell College was really nice, and you know after you graduate from college, your college facilities get nicer.  The art department moved to a different building and classrooms, gallery, and professors’ rooms are super nice.  Students were being young and Harper and I were in reminiscent moments while working on campus.  I spent a few hours in a library where you can now buy a cup of coffee, and I walked to a nice cute organic cafe for breakfast.  We also went to a local book store in Iowa city and went to a coffee shop and hang out.  It was a nice short trip for us.

This weekend, I decided to relax and not plan anything and not worry about chores.  We had a nice hippy brunch in Roscoe village and bought a cute sock monkey which is actually a cat for my professor who loves cats.  I hope she likes it.

I had a nice week and weekend.