THINGS ON THE SHORELINE (JAPANESE)

Community-engaged project, 2016
Multimedia installation, children’s book

Things on the Shoreline is a collaborative project initiated by Access Gallery, Cindy Mochizuki and the students of Lord Strathcona Elementary School and the Vancouver Japanese Language School. From October to December of 2015, Mochizuki was a guest artist at both schools, and in a series of image- and story-making workshops, worked closely with students in grades four and five. The starting point of these workshops was the visualization of an empty, barren seashore—the empty page—and, working with ink, salt, and words, and then to slowly draw out the myriad possibilities that lie await in that space. The results of the workshops—a raucous population of whimsical inky creaturely things and the invented environments in which they live—is the focus of the exhibition at Access Gallery. The project culminates in the launch of a limited-edition, hard-bound children’s storybook, which incorporates both Mochizuki's creaturely Things and those of her student-collaborators.

This project has been made possible by a BC Arts Council Youth Engagement Grant. Additional support has been generously offered by Opus Art Supplies and VIVO Media Arts Centre. Thank you to the workshop support provided by esteemed children’s educators Caroline Liffmann and Sarvenaz Amanat, for our project intern and photographer Sara Sampson, videographer Asa Mori, sound composer Ellis Sam, Japanese translator Kazuho Yamamoto and gallery prep Marc Hansen.