sunbeams

Inspired by the Showa era goldfish vending stalls. These were most often set up along the approaches to local shrines and temples with dozens of other specialty stalls that enlivened summer festivals in Japan (and still do). Back then, the glass globes (miniature goldfish bowls) hung from bamboo slats under the eaves of the stall-- a prop to make customers feel cooler in the sultry evenings of high summer, I think.

Other goldfish are sold from tanks set on the ground, and children pay for a chance to scoop them up with plastic-framed paper scoops that usually get soggy and tear before they can catch any fish. So they pay for another scoop. And another. As long as the coins that are clutched in their sweaty little palms last.

illustration friday (vocal)

popov and the goldfish

This is an etegami I submitted to a mail art exhibit at the A.S.Popov Central Museum of Communications in St.Petersburg, Russia. I've been in "fish mode" ever since the etegami I drew for the Sea Exhibition. So I drew a goldfish and applied a new twist. The bubbles coming from the goldfish's mouth were cut out of a magazine and pasted onto the card. There are both Japanese and English words inside the bubbles. These bubbles, combined with the accompanying words, are my attempt to tie the drawing into the theme of the exhibit, which I understand to be the history of communications technology, and a celebration of Popov's 150th anniversary. [Alexander Stepanovich Popov was a Russian physicist who first demonstrated the practical application of electromagnetic (radio) waves.]

The card is, in a sense, a departure from traditional etegami-- a sort of fusion between etegami and collage. It's not something I would have dared to try with etegami until very recently. But my exposure to the wider world of MailArt has been influencing me to test certain boundaries. And I'm having a great time. : )