This month's featured artist is author and artist Kit Pancoast Nagamura, whose poem "Close Enough" and accompanying photographs can be found here.
Why 8 questions? Well, the number 8--八-- is lucky in Japan, but in many cultures, it means eternity. Art and creativity are endless across time, cultures and even individuals. I hope that each issue will provide us with insight from a featured artist, insight that will inspire the creative process in you.
Why 8 questions? Well, the number 8--八-- is lucky in Japan, but in many cultures, it means eternity. Art and creativity are endless across time, cultures and even individuals. I hope that each issue will provide us with insight from a featured artist, insight that will inspire the creative process in you.
Kit Pancoast Nagamura
1. As a longterm resident of Japan, how has your creativity changed from when you first arrived in the country to today?
When I first arrived in Japan, I came with academically rigorous training and an ego that matched all that. Over the decades here, I’ve learned a different approach to poetry, and it has involved a softening of sorts, of barriers and opinions. Haiku, which many consider a solitary pursuit, is actually intensely involved with other poets: their works, their re-writes, their visions. Learning to handle that input, which in Japan can be quite subtle, has helped me grow in a way I might not have done in the United States, where taking a stance seems so crucial. Here, poetry, like most of the arts, is seen as terribly important, and knowledge of it is part of a fully-lived life. I adore living in a country where a haiku master such as Natsui Ikutsi-san appears on national TV and holds a public in thrall over her teaching of the poetic form.
2. Do you have a muse? If so can you talk about the role of the Muse in your creativity? If not, where does your inspiration come from?
Muse is a tricky term. My parents were both intensely artistic, and my debt to them is unfathomable. But I’ve also known and learned from some incredible writing instructors, such as John Hawkes, Jim Shepard, Charles Baxter, Angela Carter, and the list really does go on to the point where it’s embarrassing that I’m not a much better writer than I am. And, I’ve read, admired, and studied authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, Djuna Barnes, Ray Carver, Jorge Luis Borges, James Wright, Mary Oliver, Yasunari Kawabata and Matsuo Basho, Santoka Taneda and Yosa Buson. I think my muse, if that’s the right term, has always been the natural world. Nothing is as consistently inspiring, shocking, or important as our interaction with it.
3. Can you talk a little bit about your process? Do you prefer to create visual or written art? Do you have a process when you sit down and there’s a blank sheet of paper in front of you? How do you get flowing?
Oh gosh, I’d just love to be one of those people with a process. Where can I buy one? Most of my work doesn’t happen in front a blank sheet of paper, thank god…that’d be the end of me…but rather while I’m out walking. The column I wrote for decades was titled “The Backstreet Stories,” because every time I went out for a walk, stories came pouring out from people I interacted with. The historical background and vitality of Japanese culture made writing about Tokyo both challenging and worthwhile…and when I let my mind wander off the task of reporting, poems were lurking.
4. Has the digital age changed how you approach art?
Oh certainly. I used to go broke shooting with film. I started out photographing with a good eye for design and very little understanding of camera mechanics, so I wasted a lot of film. Of course that was good training, in a way. Digital, however, offered me the chance to go wild, to really put my camera through its paces and experiment without shelling out grocery money. It has had the side effect of making photography a much more competitive field, but we also have a far more visually astute world, thanks to digital images. As for poetry, it’s a godsend to forests everywhere that I can revise on the computer. However, for final edits, I still print out a version and do mark ups with a fountain pen.
5. For your writing, do you sit down and write everything out and then go back and edit? Or do you edit as you go?
“Writing everything out” works for me, and I usually try to put my inner critic to sleep or wear it out on some other mundane task first before addressing what’s brewing deeper. There are intuitive leaps that come to me when my editorial function is off-duty. I need those flashes…which tend to evaporate when the brain asks “what the heck are you doing here?” Editing is a long process, often seven or eight drafts long, sometimes more.
6. I spend a lot of time thinking about the difference between a writer and a storyteller, an artist and a crafter. What are your thoughts and observations on that subject.
You were right to point out that this would be the hard question to answer. I think all good writers are, in some respect, storytellers. Story, broadly described, is what propels us as readers through most writing. It exists in the dullest of scientific journal pieces as well as the tawdriest of gossip columns, and when done well, it is seductive and powerful. I’ve also thought long and hard about the difference between fiction and “factual” writing, and as you might suspect, I think all writing is, loosely, fiction, despite intentions otherwise, as it becomes story when passed through one person’s perspective and choice of words. The second part of your question is a trickier one, particularly in Japan, where “craftsmen” (which I prefer to call artisans) blur the line with their refined sensibilities. The difference, in Japan, is generally thought of as one of “utility,” with crafts being items with usefulness. That makes narrow work of the word “utility” I suppose; because I think we’ve all seen tea bowls, or indigo handtowels, or kimono that work both sides of the crafts/art aisle. But I suspect you want me to talk about the person who paints a giant oil canvas versus the homemaker who stamps out a work of potato prints? I think perhaps it is a matter of goals, which is a hard thing to pin down. But the crafter has a goal in mind, to turn this paper into something pretty or exotic or visually fun; the artist hasn’t a clue where things will go, usually, or a final product in mind, which makes it a scary, but exhilarating process. Can the woman with the potato print make art? Why not? The same way photographers can create well-crafted fashion shots and also dreamy, evocative works that call us to respond emotionally.
7. Do you have a favorite author whose writing you relate to? And the same question about an artist. (Japanese or non-Japanese)
I jumped the gun on writers (see above), but artists? Another long list. As a child, I was transfixed by the works of Giorgio di Chirico and Paul Klee, and have admired along the way artists from Motherwell to Toko Shinoda, Egon Schiele to Edward Hopper, Hilma af Klint to Richard Diebenkorn, and David Hockney to Kusama Yayoi. When it comes to photography, I look, but not too long, because I worry the images will burn out the ones I need to take myself. There is a balance between learning and inundation, and to keep that balance, I need to glance very briefly at greats such as Selvy Ngantung and Sebastiao Salgado, or Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, among others. So many names here, right? But everyone on this list is a game-changing artist, and a great place to start exploring boundaries.
8. Ramen or kaiseki?
I’d go with Kaiseki, every time—it’s seasonal, on artisanal pottery, and it’s the height of what great chefs can do. But you want to go get a bowl of ramen? I’m in.
When I first arrived in Japan, I came with academically rigorous training and an ego that matched all that. Over the decades here, I’ve learned a different approach to poetry, and it has involved a softening of sorts, of barriers and opinions. Haiku, which many consider a solitary pursuit, is actually intensely involved with other poets: their works, their re-writes, their visions. Learning to handle that input, which in Japan can be quite subtle, has helped me grow in a way I might not have done in the United States, where taking a stance seems so crucial. Here, poetry, like most of the arts, is seen as terribly important, and knowledge of it is part of a fully-lived life. I adore living in a country where a haiku master such as Natsui Ikutsi-san appears on national TV and holds a public in thrall over her teaching of the poetic form.
2. Do you have a muse? If so can you talk about the role of the Muse in your creativity? If not, where does your inspiration come from?
Muse is a tricky term. My parents were both intensely artistic, and my debt to them is unfathomable. But I’ve also known and learned from some incredible writing instructors, such as John Hawkes, Jim Shepard, Charles Baxter, Angela Carter, and the list really does go on to the point where it’s embarrassing that I’m not a much better writer than I am. And, I’ve read, admired, and studied authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, Djuna Barnes, Ray Carver, Jorge Luis Borges, James Wright, Mary Oliver, Yasunari Kawabata and Matsuo Basho, Santoka Taneda and Yosa Buson. I think my muse, if that’s the right term, has always been the natural world. Nothing is as consistently inspiring, shocking, or important as our interaction with it.
3. Can you talk a little bit about your process? Do you prefer to create visual or written art? Do you have a process when you sit down and there’s a blank sheet of paper in front of you? How do you get flowing?
Oh gosh, I’d just love to be one of those people with a process. Where can I buy one? Most of my work doesn’t happen in front a blank sheet of paper, thank god…that’d be the end of me…but rather while I’m out walking. The column I wrote for decades was titled “The Backstreet Stories,” because every time I went out for a walk, stories came pouring out from people I interacted with. The historical background and vitality of Japanese culture made writing about Tokyo both challenging and worthwhile…and when I let my mind wander off the task of reporting, poems were lurking.
4. Has the digital age changed how you approach art?
Oh certainly. I used to go broke shooting with film. I started out photographing with a good eye for design and very little understanding of camera mechanics, so I wasted a lot of film. Of course that was good training, in a way. Digital, however, offered me the chance to go wild, to really put my camera through its paces and experiment without shelling out grocery money. It has had the side effect of making photography a much more competitive field, but we also have a far more visually astute world, thanks to digital images. As for poetry, it’s a godsend to forests everywhere that I can revise on the computer. However, for final edits, I still print out a version and do mark ups with a fountain pen.
5. For your writing, do you sit down and write everything out and then go back and edit? Or do you edit as you go?
“Writing everything out” works for me, and I usually try to put my inner critic to sleep or wear it out on some other mundane task first before addressing what’s brewing deeper. There are intuitive leaps that come to me when my editorial function is off-duty. I need those flashes…which tend to evaporate when the brain asks “what the heck are you doing here?” Editing is a long process, often seven or eight drafts long, sometimes more.
6. I spend a lot of time thinking about the difference between a writer and a storyteller, an artist and a crafter. What are your thoughts and observations on that subject.
You were right to point out that this would be the hard question to answer. I think all good writers are, in some respect, storytellers. Story, broadly described, is what propels us as readers through most writing. It exists in the dullest of scientific journal pieces as well as the tawdriest of gossip columns, and when done well, it is seductive and powerful. I’ve also thought long and hard about the difference between fiction and “factual” writing, and as you might suspect, I think all writing is, loosely, fiction, despite intentions otherwise, as it becomes story when passed through one person’s perspective and choice of words. The second part of your question is a trickier one, particularly in Japan, where “craftsmen” (which I prefer to call artisans) blur the line with their refined sensibilities. The difference, in Japan, is generally thought of as one of “utility,” with crafts being items with usefulness. That makes narrow work of the word “utility” I suppose; because I think we’ve all seen tea bowls, or indigo handtowels, or kimono that work both sides of the crafts/art aisle. But I suspect you want me to talk about the person who paints a giant oil canvas versus the homemaker who stamps out a work of potato prints? I think perhaps it is a matter of goals, which is a hard thing to pin down. But the crafter has a goal in mind, to turn this paper into something pretty or exotic or visually fun; the artist hasn’t a clue where things will go, usually, or a final product in mind, which makes it a scary, but exhilarating process. Can the woman with the potato print make art? Why not? The same way photographers can create well-crafted fashion shots and also dreamy, evocative works that call us to respond emotionally.
7. Do you have a favorite author whose writing you relate to? And the same question about an artist. (Japanese or non-Japanese)
I jumped the gun on writers (see above), but artists? Another long list. As a child, I was transfixed by the works of Giorgio di Chirico and Paul Klee, and have admired along the way artists from Motherwell to Toko Shinoda, Egon Schiele to Edward Hopper, Hilma af Klint to Richard Diebenkorn, and David Hockney to Kusama Yayoi. When it comes to photography, I look, but not too long, because I worry the images will burn out the ones I need to take myself. There is a balance between learning and inundation, and to keep that balance, I need to glance very briefly at greats such as Selvy Ngantung and Sebastiao Salgado, or Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, among others. So many names here, right? But everyone on this list is a game-changing artist, and a great place to start exploring boundaries.
8. Ramen or kaiseki?
I’d go with Kaiseki, every time—it’s seasonal, on artisanal pottery, and it’s the height of what great chefs can do. But you want to go get a bowl of ramen? I’m in.
