Book Marks

It seems rare nowadays to see anyone read a book conscientiously more than half an hour. On the other hand, this broken effort gives one many chances to use a bookmark. I used to use a piece of paper, an old punched ticket, an ad, and all kinds of small scattered pieces of paper to mark the page. Seeing these sudden "bookmarks" again and again, I started to feel I must use something better, at least out of respect for the book. Surely, when my eyes are exposed to these tiny bits of paper again and again, do they not influence to my visual and aesthetic sense? Why should I not have a pretty book mark then? That's how this series was born.

Life is a collage

I have always been attracted to collage. Collage is, by definition, a "collection of things...similar or different." So, isn't it true, collage is our life!

In our life, we attract people who have similar ideas and life styles. We sympathize with each other but at the same time we are attracted to people who have different views. With them we are both stimulated and forced to react on the same page. And each page has its own picture. The picture shows the collaboration of each component, each soul. Each one of us is a component. Every component has its role to create in the picture and we are destined to collaborate until we are forced to move on to the next page to create a new story.

We are surrounded by so many different things. Looking around me, for instance, here is an electronic device which I'm carefully tickling to capture my thoughts. To the right of me and behind there are plants. Behind those plants is a sliding glass door, my door to nature. A wooden floor is under me, at the end of the wooden floor, there is a 135 year-old antique parlour organ. This is my small heaven. The place where I work.

I believe our thoughts are a collage, too. One moment you are wondering what you'll have for lunch, but the next you think about the day you were with your grandmother at the amusement park aged 5. And then you think of the book you just read the night before, or even leap to the future, unknown but full of mystery and hope.

Our lives are a dance in which we are balancing delicately; very delicately, upon those relentless and unstoppable variations of physical and mental realities.

We want to live peacefully, whatever the situation is. But we also want our lives to be a vibrant collage of artwork with many different components. Ultimately possessing an inherent unity which enables us to savor and enjoy the differences.

When I make collages, I take the components randomly so that my intuition will decide what is best, not my will. If I only use my will in order to make a "beautiful" picture, it becomes simply human, something within the limits of my ability in my short life. I think then it will be boring.

To see and to show something we've never even dreamt before, I put out my antennae and become a conduit. I borrow the power of intuition and chance to find the spot for each missing piece as I finish a puzzle born with both visible and invisible parts.

Jomon

Jomon is the name of an archaeological period of ancient Japan and its culture. I am totally fascinated by the artifacts produced during this time. The earliest stage of Jomon culture began an astonishingly long time ago, about 14,000 BCE and lasted until to 300 BCE. The faces and shapes that appear on Jomon pottery are mysterious, primitive, magical and sometimes humorous. Since the birthplace of my parents has a Jomon Museum, I believe my ancestor is also of the Jomon people. Copying these images, I want to extract the power and energy of my ancestors and bring it into the modern world.

Mother and Child

This relationship is the core of everything. I take photos of a mother and a child or of children's image at the museum, in books, or copy them onto papers. Hearing stories from a daughter or a son about a mother or vice versa, I currently only put them into memory, but eventually I want to do a Mother and Child project in all types and by various ways of expressions

Portrait

The human face is a beautiful geographical feature in which you read the person's history and personality. I like it when the person in the portrait is staring at you straightforwardly. While following the line, I wish I could draw and bring up something deeper behind the mask everyone puts on to live successfully in this life.

Paleozoic

When I first learned about this period in the Earth's life, starting nearly half a billion years ago, I was overwhelmed at how weird so many creatures were at that time. It was still early in the process of evolution, and life was trying to think what would be the best form to use to survive. For example, Opabania has four eyes and his mouth extends far away from his face. It is attached on top of a tube departing from his face. Many people should know this and see so many of the other wonderful creatures of very very ancient times.

Picture Poem

The pictures in this project can be anything; collages, drawings and paintings. The picture poem is born when those images inspire me to write poems or short-short stories. I love the combination of image and words. They are inseparable. It is an almost perfect way of sending a message. I say "almost" because the tiny vacancy in the image should be filled in by the viewer and the reader. It's they who complete the work, and bring the impression with them. That's why I love art. It's so flexible, you don't have to get any message. On the contrary, you can be overwhelmed by the work, and the art, the idea, the thunderbolt of understanding, it is yours alone. Sometimes the well-thought-through title is enough. I'm always excited by how I am inspired by an image. In fact, I've never done it the opposite way; Words come first then the image. Someday, I'll try it. I am in the flow of flexibility, a leaf in the river of art.

Photo-poem

For Captains Cove and Photo-Poetry

One evening of a day in autumn 2006, we visited Captains Cove. The animated season had already ended. No one was there. To me, who was grown up in the middle of a suburban city, the ocean has been always the target of my admiring.

Each part of the sea, the port, and the things associated with them interested me a lot and I took photos successively. Most of the times I approached those forms as closely as possible. Not from a distance, because I cannot feel life that way.

When the image was printed out, staring at them for a while, there was a moment I felt unlimited imagination expanding suddenly. The existence of the new form fed my thoughts- an accumulation of fragments of memory, emotion, experience, conscious, unconscious, influence from others, records printed on my DNA, all crossed, complicated.

One of the most thrilling moments comes when a small world is born which I've never expected before. This is thrilling because surely I will find a piece of my ego in the unknown world, and I don't know if I want to face it or not.

However, as a creator of the story, I have an ambition as well; I'd like to let you know that everyday life is full of surprise, and non-ordinary things are hidden in daily life. I use a camera to dig out the hidden things.

I'd like to lead you to the mid-point on the way to the surreal world. Put one foot in the realm of reality (photo), and the other is in the surreal (poem). When you are there, you might find your own unconscious world.

Picture Diary

On May 15,2015, I began expressing everyday feeling in a picture diary. The purpose was to observe it calmly so that I can release it. Since I had so much anger and sadness inside and it came to the point where I don’t care anything: I was suddenly trapped by the negative feelings so much that in the middle of the night starting to type long e-mails to the certain people. Calling them frantically, and tears fell down nonstop.

I knew, though, if I didn’t get out of this bottom less mud of self-misery, frustration, anger of all kinds of harmful feelings, I’d eventually kill my potential to live better, to serve people, and make people happy and even the will to live.

One day, I happened to hear one spiritual guidance. It says if you can keep happy feeling 30 days then you can feel that way most of the times then it will become your basic feeling. Since then, I began to observe how I felt day by day to express it in visual image. I have been keeping a diary for 14 years, so it was not difficult to do this. I add visual image into each ３×４cm square mass.

Then an unexpected thing happened.

I began to draw over the 3 by 4 square, slowly but surely, I feel my mind was released more freely. I couldn't stop it. It became an important routine every day. The bigger the size gets; the more creativity joins in the interesting way which I’ve never thought about. The mind which mostly expressed its fragility and seeking for strong sympathy from the others have gradually shifted to calmness, appreciation, self-healing and wanting to heal the others.

Through this works, I might be able to sublimate my inner confined feeling toward creation.

The “Picture Diary” is from May 15, 2015 to May 8, 2016.

It is Feb. 2021 now. We have been quarantine since last March 2020.

I don't deny that there have been many days of "cabin fever", harsh quarrels before midnights, confined my self in the bed room etc.

My frustration is unbearable. "Where in the world has my spiritual learning and the achievement gone?" "Why did I react so much for nothing, literally nothing?"

I've returned to the chaos after I thought I fixed all. I can’t help thinking that I am the victims of the others. The idea surely leads us self-destruction and/or attacking the others.

This victimized mind is one of the major causes of our fighting.

I have decided to take my pens to observe my mind calmly and warmly, the picture diary under quarantine COVID 19.

I will start today on Valentines Day 2021 for 30 days.

May we have world peace.

May you have your own inner peace.

Kohava Ray