New web and blog

I have my web site set up.

www.hiroshi-hayakawa.com 

Please click on the above URL and visit this new site. There are tons more stuff I have posted there. Thanks!!!
Hiroshi

Kirigami Animal kit available!

My publisher Sterling recently released a new edition of Kirigami Animal kit based on my book Kirigami Menagerie. It is an exclusive edition only sold at Barnes and Noble book stores and their online store. Here is the link. This kit includes the book Kirigami Menagerie, pre-cut templates of all 38 animals and one almost completed giraffe. For some atrange reason the price of the kit is less than the price of the book...

Vista Interna in action

Here is the link to a compilation video clip of my sculptures Vista Interna # 1 ~ #6 in action with a better resolution. A low resolution video clip is below. And this is the Columbus Dispatch newspaper exhibit review.

My show

I had my gallery show opening yesterday and I just came back home after surviving this month's Gallery Hop night. I saw a TON of people, talking to them about my new work. It was a lot of work but fun. Now I can take a little breather, so I figured I should post the images of my new pieces. These are the ones I am currently exhibiting at Sherrie Gallerie in Columbus, OH. The show will run through July 31st.
Here is my artist statement for this show.

Artist Statement
My new series titled, "Vista Interna" communicates certain desires and the sense of secrets that go with the act of voyeurism. These kinetic sculptures come to life by the hand of the audience and this interactivity is essential to make the viewing experience complete. Each piece displays a different scene inside, but they are always about a drama between a hand and red balls. There are many layers of meanings to each piece. However, I would like to leave the interpretations to each audience. This body of work attempts to tap into an intermediate zone where art and toy, reality and illusion and materials and spirit meet.

This is the frontal exterior view of the piece called "Vista Interna #1". It is an interactive sculpture to be activated by a viewer with the turn of a crank which is located in the back.
And here is the interior view through a peephole. The mechanical hand pushes down the black string which is connected to the red ball hanging on the outside. So when the finger moves, the ball moves too.
There are total 6 pieces and they are very similar in terms of exterior designs. They all use hand crank vintage phonograph motors as power sources. The switches on the backs are for the lights inside the boxes.

Here is "Vista Interna #2". Fingers tap on the floor and the red ball swings back and forth.

"Vista Interna #3". 2 inside fingers move and the red ball swings over them back and forth like a pendulum.

"Vista Interna #4". The fingers travel left and right back and forth over the red balls.

"Vista Interna #5". All 5 fingers move and gently rock the red balls cradled in the hand.

And "Vista Interna #6". 4 fingers in the back move up and down while the 2 red balls in the foreground dance around going back and forth across the floor.

Free Kirigami Turkey!

My publisher Lark Books uploaded a kirigami Turkey I recently designed for Thanksgiving along with my interview on their craft website. Here is the link. You can download the template of my turkey for free, color it any way you like and make your own unique bird to decorate your dinner table.

Peepshow #8

Here is a quick snapshot of my new piece Peepshow #8. It is the smallest box I have ever designed: 17"x 14"x14". I also made it as light as possible by using thinner wood panels and adding extra support mterials around the corners. As far as the mechanism goes, this is probably the most well-designed of all the Peepshow pieces. It uses 4 gears and 1 cam to produce 2 movements generated by 1 electric motor.
I haven't documented the interior view of this piece yet. I will upload it when I have a chance.

Peepshow #5 in action

This was the first piece that moved my kinetic sculptures into a slightly different direction than I had initially envisioned. I started to enjoy so much freedom when working on this kind of work. I also felt that I was going back to the kind of things I had been interested in many years back when I was younger and it just felt "right" to work on this sculpture. The movement of the arm is a little clumsy, but I am happy about the overall design of this room.

Peepshow #6 in action

Here is the video of Peepshow #6 in action. I dedicated this sculpture to 2 of my pets who passed away that year. I was thinking about some invisible force that sometimes affects our lives in an unexpected way, and when you look back later, you can almost feel its presence in the course of events that took place.

"Fingers"

When I was searching for automata online, I came across this piece called "Fingers" designed by a Britain based artist Nik Ramage. The mechanism and movement are similar to my Peepshow #7, but it is a more stripped down version. I think this is a simple yet very whimsical piece. Very nice. Here is the piece in action. You can purchase this piece (they made 10 copies) through Cabaret Mechanical Theatre website.

Peepshow #7 in action

Here is a short clip of my kinetic sculpture "Peepshow #7" in action. This piece is about frustration related to the experience of "seeing". But while working on this piece, by adding fingers, eye, scissors to the whole design of the set, it ended up suggesting a sexual undertone, which I had not originally intended...

Kinetic sculpture "Peepshow" series

Here are some samples of my kinetic sculptures called Peepshows. These were originally developed from my photography pieces as far as their concept was concerned. I was thinking about the experiences of taking pictures with a camera, turning your photographic subjects into objects, and owning them as mementos. I was intrigued by our basic desires behind all those actions. The realization that it all comes from the fact that we are all desperately trying to preserve something that's constantly disappearing in front of our eyes made me view photography as a medium born out of our impossible dreams. I decided to reposition this whole idea and drama into a sculptural context, involving the elements that make the medium of photography possible: time (movement), light, monocular vision through a lens, machinery, etc..
The box (approx. 23" cube) reminds us of an over-sized pinhole camera. When you peek into the spy lens on the front panel, you will see a motorized sculpture (body part) moving endlessly repeating the same motions over and over. The perspective is distorted due to the use of the lens, making the interior space much deeper than actually is. There is a sense of witnessing some kind of naughty secret about the act of looking into a small opening with your back hunched over, and that's the reason why I decided to call them Peepshows. The mechanism used for these pieces are pretty low-tech: basically gears, cams and electric motors. These pieces show my fascination with the mid-19th to early 20th century automata. I love those mechanical toys from that era which seem to exist in the gray zone in between art, toy, science and magic.
I am currently working on capturing these pieces in action on video.

My photographic images are printed on sheets of oxidized metal (mostly steel) using the liquid photo emulsion called "Liquid Light". It is manufactured by the company : Rockland.
For the online portfolio of my photography work, Click here.
My work is represented by Sherrie Gallerie, Columbus, OH.

Here is the artist statement on this part of my work.
My photographic work deals with the transformation of the physical and conceptual properties of the medium by means of time. My images are printed on oxidized sheet metal through the application of photographic emulsion onto the surface. In this process the rust on the metal penetrates the image from underneath and surfaces to become part of the image. The time represented by a photographic image, which belongs to the past, is physically shifted and relocated by the decay of the material, which is the manifestation of on-going time. The senses of permanence and timelessness conventionally associated with photographic prints are re-examined by the impermanence implied by the material. In a literal and symbolic sense, my main subject-matters: female nudes provide the ground where these 2 points in time meet and the figures work as a catalyst to accelerate this transformation of the medium due to the transient nature of beauty with which female nudes are viewed. Sometimes by juxtaposing oxidation against the figure and sometimes by blending the oxidation with the figure, I try to create a visual and psychological tension. I would like to continue exploring a new possibility of dialogue that would bridge images, materials and time.

A new book of paper animal sculptures out!

I have recently published a book of paper animal sculptures. Each of these animals was designed to be constructed, without the use of glue or adhesive tape, out of one continuous sheet of paper (except for the large ones like elephants and alligator, they simply didn't fit in single pages and I had to design them in sections). You copy the template on a sheet of card stock paper (there are many colors and textures available at craft stores), score the folding lines, cut the templates out and turn them into 3-D sculptures. Kirigami is a combination of 2 Japanese words "kiri" (cutting) and "kami" (paper). My designs are a kind of hybrid kirigami that involves a lot of origami techniques.
The whimsical limericks on the photograph pages were written by Erik Johnson.
The book is available through Amazon, Barnes And Noble and through the website of my publisher Lark Books.

Reviews on the book I found online.
review 1
review 2