"Finding the Connections: A lifelong exploration of beauty,time and impermanence"
Interview with Joel Stewart, a Kyoto-based artist
By Chris Summerville
Chris Summerville has been teaching about Sustainability and Environmental Education at Japanese universities for thirty years. He lives on the shores of Lake Biwa with his family and loves bicycling, camping, and actively trying to share his ideas on learning from Japan’s past to help move towards a more community-based and spiritually ecological future paradigm.
Standing before the three full-sized byobu screens placed at angles to each other on the tatami floor of The Terminal Kyoto, my attention is immediately drawn into the profusion of multi-colored tulips pouring out of the screen they share with a huge ghost-like image of a perfectly shaped porcelain pot. My eyes literally slide over to the sculpture on paper of the angelic face of a Roman youth hovering on a pedestal bathed in celestial light and the x-ray like ‘sketch’ of a classic ikebana arrangement on the screen’s other half until finally reaching the sumi-e waterfall cascading down the cliff face - its movement in stark contrast to the solid black-grey-white stripes with which it is paired.
I have entered the world of Joel Stewart, a Kyoto-based artist who creates evocative scenes by combining elements of East and West. His works on paper using watercolor and acrylic have gone through many variations during his forty-year career but the goal has always remained the same: to reveal the abstract in the real and vice versa.
This is a part of Joel’s story:
“I grew up in Washington State in the USA and went to university in South California where I was a double major studying Art and Anthropology. I came to Japan in 1986 when I was twenty-seven and my original thought was to stay a year or so and see how the experience of living in another culture would shape my art. It was a choice between an African country, but I had no contacts in Africa whereas I had a chance encounter with two mixed race Japanese-American students while I was working on set design in university who kept saying ‘Joel, you really must visit Japan, especially Kyoto,’ and it was their enthusiasm that made me decide to come here.”
This would not be not Joel’s first exposure to ‘things Japanese’ as he goes on to recount:
“Actually, I had been exposed to ‘hits’ of Japan ever since I was in 4th grade. My best friend was the son of a Japanese mother and an American service man. Also, by chance, my teacher at that time was a second-generation Japanese young woman and she used to always tell us about Japanese culture. Finally, my father used to come to Japan on business trips in the 70’s and brought back all these wonderful souvenirs. He gave me my first sumi-e brush along with an ink set when I was in 4th grade and later brought back woodblock prints and other mysterious and exotic Japanese gifts. This was the start of my exposure to the mysteries of a culture that has a whole different way of seeing things; even what constitutes ‘beauty.’”
When asked about his work, Joel replies:
“Before I came to Japan I already had my own thematic style in a sense and it is a path I am still developing. Simply put, I have always searched for ways to utilize realism and abstraction together. In other words, seeing and depicting the abstract beauty in real things and vice versa. Depending on the period, one of these forms may be more overt that the other but I am always trying to find different ways to combine realism and abstraction and to show one in the other.
Two of the Joel’s recurrent motifs in much of his work, one structural and the other visual, have been his use of ‘byobu’ or folding screens and his depictions of vases. Joel explains:
“Probably around 1997-1998, an artist friend introduced me to a traditional ‘mounter’ (hyoguya) who makes both the screens and scrolls and then mounts the paintings onto them. From the introduction to Masao Fujita that day began a collaborative relationship that lasted nearly 15 years. The very angular ‘Asian cubism’ kind of twist the screens exerted on the painted image was really contemporary looking to my eyes. Taking a painting which is supposed ‘behave’ as a flat object and then suddenly telling it that it can be a 3-dimensional object jutting back and forth into space is sort of like telling a sculpture it can get up and walk around freely, in my mind. I'm still learning what screens are capable of actually and that's part of the magic that keeps me.”
When asked about how he feels about Kyoto and its role in his work after living here for more than 30 years, Joel’s response is both passionate and profound.
“It may sound strange, since I am a foreigner, but it is easy for me to be ‘invisible’ in Kyoto since I have no history here, as such. This town, which has become my home, is a place where I can have peace of mind, that offers a quietness as well as a sense of belonging. People here will leave you alone if you wish them to and as an artist I am able to dip into the surroundings, to engage with the culture and then to return to my studio and work undisturbed. Kyoto is a city of little touches, small details that constantly catch you by surprise. They don’t have to be ancient or traditional, there are just so many aesthetic images that catch you off guard on any street you wander down in this city, even something just sitting on a person’s doorstep. I am constantly inspired on my walks along the Kamo River, the Botanical Gardens and Daitoku-ji Temple, all close to my neighborhood, which are three of my favorite places here.
He concludes: “I am so grateful, that this place, Kyoto, even after all this time here, still continues to amaze me. It is such an inspiring place to live and offers endless possibilities for the types of work I am creating now and hope to continue to create in the future.”