The great film maker Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) said,"In an era of no borders, people who do not have a place to stand will be treated unseriously. A place is the past and history. A person with no history, a people who have forgotten their past, will vanish like snow, or be turned into chickens to keep laying eggs until they are eaten." (www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/proposal.html)
Miyazaki seems to be celebrating the role of myths and narratives in the survival and growth of culture, especially in cultures where the boundaries are blurring with each global advancement, like our is now. Myths and narratives that have roots in ancient tales will help us retain the integrity of our cultures while branching into the global stories that are being created moment by moment.
One of the jobs of the artist is to observe and convey the flavor of a culture. This can be done through many different types of work, but I do it through the form of visual stories. All of my pieces can be thought of as visual stories, and though I have a story in mind when I make a piece of work, I feel that my version is by no means the only possible one. I think it is quite likely that each viewer could make a unique version that expresses the image. Viewed together, these stories might begin to tell us something about who we are and where we stand in our global village.
I would like to invite everyone who reads this blog to record a story about any of the pieces shown here by posting a comment about these paintings and drawings. These stories could be any length. One sentence could be enough as long as it conveys the meaning that the viewer experiences, and the posts can be anonymous. I hope you will consider participating in this project. Maybe it will keep us from being turned into chickens.
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