The Rising

The rising sun

The rising moon

These are two images I made a little over a year ago for a series I was tentatively calling "the rising."  The visual look of the series was developing from what I was seeing in Japanese ehon [1] and watercolor. The structure of the series, I was hoping, would loosely represent a lifespan. The first image, besides evoking the Japanese flag (as a nod to the Japanese artistic traditions I was drawing from), was intended to be an image of birth generally, while referencing the mythical birth of Amaterasu Omikami [2], the Shinto sun goddess.  As well, it borrows from western symbolism the comparison of two types of human creativity—expression and birth.  I find this metaphor particularly interesting—both telling and compelling—and my use of it here is in part my working through one of my favorite sections from Whitman's "Song of Myself" [3].  I intended the second image, to represent in part a passage into death, but also, as the moon functions symbolically in Western tradition, a form of rebirth. I had it in mind that the images would be viewed cyclically, so that one could start again at the rising sun.

Overall, I was hoping the work would flaunt the divide between “eastern” and “western” pre-globized culture that has persisted for both practical and political reasons. The images would be sort of be an irreverent mingling of the two, for the joy of it.

These two images and that general outline above was as far as I got before being derailed by other things—life. I'm not sure if I'll ever pick up the project again or not. So, I figured I'd bring them back to mind and see what would happen.