SNAP | society of northern alberta print-artists

review from VUE WEEKLY, May

Jo versus the volcano
Michiko Suzuki’s prints evoke compassion, serenity in a disharmonious world

A single Japanese word, jo, captures the essence of the prints of Michiko Suzuki, a distinguished visiting artist at the University of Alberta whose work is currently on display at the SNAP Gallery. Yet the translation of this deceptively small word is fraught with difficulties; the Japanese language uses words in the way that Western poets use them, so that words have open meanings which can’t easily be explained by terse dictionary definitions.

Suzuki ponders deeply as she struggles to find an English-language equivalent for jo. “When people try to understand another person,” she finally says, “they may express compassion, which is called jo or nasake in Japanese.” The term can refer to the way a couple loves each other, the way parents love their children, the way children love their parents or the way friends feel a strong bond of love. Although the literal translation is “feeling,” words such as sentiment, love, sympathy, heart, affection and emotion are equally valid translations.

For Suzuki, the act of creation is not enough; it is only when the viewer connects with her art that she feels her work becomes complete. Even the titles of her prints are designed to invoke viewer participation; she calls many of her works “A Feeler” in honour of the people who wish to touch her works visually, emotionally and physically. Suzuki says her work strives to bring back the moment of meditation, the sensuous perception of simple beauty—the kind of moment that she believes has been lost in our ceaseless drive towards efficiency.

Suzuki’s images seem to flow like water across the paper. It’s not surprising to learn that the ocean and all the creatures that live in its depths fascinate her. Yet nothing in the prints refers to a particular sea creature—it is the abstract essence of life forms that is the source of her meditation.

Blowing and snowing
In order to achieve this sense of fluidity in her work, Suzuki had to abandon traditional printmaking approaches. In their place, she developed a technique of her own, one that could better express her feelings about the softness of touch and capture the present moment. She lays liquid ground on a plate that is rotated vertically; as the liquid flows down, she has only an instant to shape the fleeting image that she forms with air blown from a hairdryer.

During her stay in Edmonton, Suzuki says she has turned to snow and light for inspiration. “I am always watching snow,” she explains. “I am influenced by the silence and the beauty of snow, the light reflections that catch your eyes.” She is both amused and surprised by the transformation that her work has undergone since this drastic change of scenery. She laughs as she explains the change the prints that had been completed in Japan have a tonal, watery haze, while her recent works glow with the brilliance of the prairie winter light.

One element that has not changed is the feeling of spaciousness in her work. (Perhaps the vastness of the prairies relates well to Japanese ocean vistas.) Empty space confronts the viewer in these prints. Objects remain peripheral, and a perfect balance exists between nothingness and life forms. “Japanese people call it ku,” Suzuki says. “It literally means sky space, but there are a lot of other meanings, like substantial emptiness.” This concept is a difficult one for Westerners to comprehend since the idea of “filled emptiness” seems contradictory and paradoxical to us. But Suzuki has found innovative ways of guiding the viewer into a deeper understanding of ku. In “A Feeler 25,” for instance, she depicts what appears, from a distance, to be a large empty space—however, upon closer examination, the emptiness turns out to be filled with a variety of shapes. The image has become a visual metaphor of ku.

Constant caving
Suzuki tells a story about how, as a child, she went to explore a cave. The dim, mysterious opening of the cave frightened her. She was afraid of going inside, afraid of the dark and of what lay within. Yet the desire to see something beyond the darkness gave her the courage to enter. The print “A Feeler 2” is based on that experience. It depicts a large circular form, shaped like the entrance to a cave. “I made this print to express ku,” she explains. “Darkness is full, nothingness is full.”

What is the purpose of art? What is the role of the artist in society? These are some of the larger questions that Suzuki’s work investigates—and she provides us with some interesting answers. “As an artist,” she says, “I hope that the viewer will try to see the things in emptiness. But more than looking at art, it is a way of looking at life.” For Suzuki, life and art are not only a part of the same thing—she emphatically says that they are “totally the same.” She goes on to say that she views her body as a kind of conduit, a tool through which something creates. Her role, then, becomes that of a shaman who leads the viewer into a deeper understanding of the present moment. V

by AGNIESZKA MATEJKO

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