Contemporaly Art festival on islands

"The Setouchi International Art Festival is a contemporary art festival held every three years on a dozen islands in the Seto Inland Sea (Setonaikai), the sea which separates Honshu and Shikoku, two of Japan's main islands. First held in 2010, this year's festival features over 150 artworks. " Reference; http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e5410.html

These island used to carry a role to transmit new culture and the traffic long time ago.

 

 

Traditional culture and a beautiful natural scene are still here in these islands. However, islands are losing vitality by aging and facing the depopulation problem.

 

By the interchange of the resident of the island and the visitor all over the world started to revitalize their island.

 

By the holding of the international art festival in Seto helps to keep traditional culture of the island and beautiful nature.   

 

The whole island become like an art museum! (this used to be a dental clinic and it tuned into?..) 

There are 8 islands for this event and it is cooperated with local residents.

This event is on my check list for when I visit my family! (No, I haven't been there yet!)

 

*** cover art

I might as well upload some images from Japan, since I have been doing it last few weeks,,  :)

Can you tell what are these arts?

 

These are the art on manhole covers in the street. 

 

 Not all of the manhole covers look that colorful like previous one, but the non-colored ones are beautiful, too.
  

 

The art is usually about the tourist attraction and the name, mascot character, and flowers of the city.

I really like the idea changing a big and heavy iron that nobody usually even pay attention into a beautiful art object.

 

I found this flickr page for more pictures,,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28074232@N06/sets/72157612036691185/

 
References,
http://www.gizmodo.jp/2010/08/post_7547.html
http://photohito.com/photo/1413030/
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/tottuan310920/e/fe9c0923b47e42c24c2720386cf01b7d

Tanbo Art

Can you tell what are these images?

 

It is drawn with different rice plants on the field.  They are planted by people of the village by hand.  The title, Tanbo means Rice field.   

It started in the north side of main land Japan where there are large spaces of rice fields. They started out for an advertisement so that the village can make some money but the art had to include companies logo and their products.

 

It started to become popular for tourist so now the purpose for the art changed from advertisement to just pure art.

 

 I can't imagine how they plan this out to plant on such a large space to look like 3 dimensional art.  Yes, they are planted to look really pop out from certain angle!  Recently, many of the tanbo arts are intended to encourage the revival from a giant earthquake happened around this area in 2011.

 

Osaka

I was going through my computer and I happened to find these pictures.

 It was taken in Osaka last year.  Osaka is the second largest city in Japan known for good local food and very friendly people.    

 

I took this pictures in Doutonbori where a lot of stores and restaurants are located.  The signs are so flashy and bold, it reminds of me Times square in New York.

 

These signs and displays are eye-catching!! I was so hungry but I could not decide what I wanted to eat because all the signs and smells were so tempting.  Many of these display moves, make noise and sometime they put out the steam just like a theme park.
 I can tell the designer and advertiser have a lot of fun competing each other and that makes this city lively!

Kawaii characters!

When I see the cute character like Duck or Gecko in advertising, it always catches my attention and I tend to remember for a long time.  It maybe comes from where I grew up,  Japanese are crazy about Kawaii (means cute) stuff!

This is done by the best sales cell phone company in the country.  You see this white dog in almost all ads as well as TV commercial.  In a TV commercial, they use a real dog and he talks like human!

This character is from Kumamoto prefecture to advertise the tourist attraction and the local food.

This kitten samurai is called "Hiko nyan" (Nyan means Meow) to help to publicize the Hikone castle.

I think we like to see in simple drawings and pictures rather than just letters.  If the pictures are easy to recognize, it catches young and old people's attention.  Therefore, these characters are always in great success as an advertisement. 

Route 66

On Labor day, my husband, I and my dog Jake took a small day trip. Our goal is to just drive south on old Route 66, make as many stops as we can to take pictures and just explore the old 66 stuff.  We started from Dwight, IL and drive to south.  We ran into several murals in Pontiac, IL.  They are all very nice!  Many of the arts are like 3 Dimensional , the painting looks like it can pop out from the wall!  I like this symmetrical design but it has Chicago and St Louis drawing on the both side. It is well balanced image with the red Pontiac, IL sign over the 66 sign that make a good focal point.
 This is a pure art, it may not be exactly an commercial art but this art attracts travelers so that more people stop at this town and spend some money here.

This is another fun 3D art with my doggy.  :)
       

Krispy Kreme

A couple of days ago, my boss brought us a box of Krispy Kreme Donuts. (I guess we can buy at a few gas station in town.) Unfortunately I threw the box away so I find this image just like the box my boss brought. It is amazing that this company have been around so long (since 1937) and the logo still looks great! It bring people to the good old years. The good design years. Once you see this font of Krispy Kreme and the everybody's favorite color combination of red and green with small dots, it sticks to your memory and makes us want to eat some donuts!