John K. Grande

Father Sky Mother Earth. The words

seem to shout out like a cry or a scream

of recognition that we all need to have a

home, to belong, and that our “family” is

the earth itself, and the cosmos, our

world, is not just a place for art, but for

the integration of social, environmental,

human and public needs and concerns.

Father Sky Mother Earth also suggests a

unity, a harmony, an acceptance that we

are part of a huge family, connected,

interconnected, interrelated to an

environmental totality. The artists

participating in this 4th Edition of the

Tsukuba International Open Air

Contemporary Art Exhibition present an

incredibly diverse range of ways to

reconnect to the physical, tactile,

perceptual world we live in. These artists’

actions are aesthetic, social and

ecological gestures that help us to sense

this contact with the earth and universe.

Each approach is personal reflecting

cultural diversity, each has its own way

of seeing and being. This event makes us

feel the incredible diversity of this world

we are a part of, and how art and science

are inseparable. Dark black boulders,

dragonflies, trees that reach upwards to

the sky, the forests themselves that are

places of being, the streams that weave

their way through this environment near

Mount Tsukuba, a source and a backdrop

to this year’s event.

A wonderful place!

 

John K. Grande