Japanese Art

Hiroshi Teshigahara had not yet arrived, but his presence was keenly felt in the frigid bowels of the Kennedy Center, where last Monday, a platoon of volunteer art students, Japanese carpenters and free-lance stagehands scrubbed, sawed, split and planed four acres' worth of bamboo, hauled to Washington from Georgia in two tractor-trailers.When the artist, revered in his native Japan and known internationally for his rhythmically powerful sculptures, did arrive later that week, he and assistants would use the prepped bamboo to create two stunning tunnels and a bamboo pavilion in the Kennedy Center's atrium, based on elaborate blueprints completed in Tokyo.

"CONGRATULATE me," said Jeffrey Kelly when his mother came to pick him up from school one day earlier this year.Nine-year-old Jeff couldn't wait to show her the letter announcing that his artwork was chosen for display at the Anne Arundel delegation room in the House of Delegates building in Annapolis.The show of selected artwork from county schools opened in January and will continue through mid-April.For Jeff, a fourth-grader at Ferndale Elementary School, the project combined his social studies class' study of Japan with his art class' study of Japanese print-making.

The three vases are decorated in blue and such a brilliant yellow that they seem to radiate light. One has a picture of bamboo growing to the lip of the vase."

Those who saw Mineko Grimmer's elegant and mesmerizing "music boxes" at the Maryland Institute's recent "Hypnosis" exhibit may be surprised to learn that this Los Angeles artist is represented here again so soon, in a show at Goucher College called "Confluence: Art at the Intersection of Japanese and American Esthetics."Although Grimmer's one work at Goucher is in principle much the same as the two at the institute, it's on a larger scale and in a different context."Confluence" brings together two artists who have experienced both Japanese and American influences, Grimmer and Tom Nakashima, to see how the two countries' aesthetics can merge in individuals.

Q: Do you know of organizations that offer trips to Japan focusing on the country's arts and crafts and design, perhaps with the possibility of visiting artists' studios or seeing craftspeople at work?A: Journeys East, 2443 Fillmore Ave., San Francisco, Calif. 94115, (415) 647-9565, offers "Brushes With Past and Present," which focuses on traditional Japanese arts. The 16-day trip out of San Francisco includes an ikebana (flower arranging) class in Tokyo, visits to a master potter's studio in Mie Prefecture and a woodblock carving studio in Kyoto (with the option of seeing craftspeople engaged in silk dyeing, weaving, paper making or other arts and crafts)

The third annual African-American Film Festival gets under way Thursday in the Baltimore Museum of Art's Meyerhoff Theatre with the screening of an American satire and a Senegalese adventure story."

Sitting on the studio floor, the sculpture's head alone is taller than and several times as wide as Yasuhiko Hashimoto, the Japanese sculptor standing beside it. And, while Mr. Hashimoto is so soft-spoken it's sometimes hard to hear him with the other sculptors chopping away in the background, the head looks as if, were it to speak, it would at least growl and probably roar.Fudo Myoh-oh is a fierce looking Buddhist god. Don't be afraid -- he's on our side against the demons -- but he's probably going to look even fiercer next Sunday, with his head attached to his body and the whole sculpture raised upright for the first time to its full height of 33 feet.

In a brightly lighted conference room at the Pascal Senior Center on Dorsey Road, artwork depicting Japanese houses, people and landscapes is prominently displayed.The matted and framed works are woodblock prints, the products of one teacher, Reiko Ohnuki, and 13 of her students from a senior center in Maryland's Japanese sister state, Kanagawa.The projects, which will be donated to the Department of Aging after the exhibit, have come from the Kamkura City Senior Citizens' Welfare and Culture Center, one of four senior centers in Kamakura City.