Metropolitan Museum

The Sogetsu School of Ikebana chose some of their New York based members to create some beautiful arrangements to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum! Two of those members were my Grandmother (Kazuko Moriwaki) and my Aunt (Shoko Iwata).

When we first walked in, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my Aunt's arrangement (top) was the center piece in the room. It had a strong sweep to it that left me staring at it for a while. Below that was an arrangement done by my Grandmother, and two other members (Yuriko Hiramoto and Jacqueline Lorieo). This one was very interesting in that it had two arrangements almost physically interacting with each other to become one piece. Really beautiful and inspiring work from everyone who participated.

But it had also been a while since my last visit to this grand museum and I ended up having a lot of fun with my Leica camera. Below are some various shots I took throughout the enormous structure.

Postcards

Another visit to my Grandmother's house, another treasure found. This time a very impressive collection of postcards from all over the world, each one carefully labeled and inserted inside large photo albums. Most of them are typical images that you'd expect to be printed on something such as a postcard. But then there are others that really get my inspiration tingling. The colors in some of these are terrific. I'm definitely scanning some of them in higher resolution and printing them out as posters, particularly the top one.

Anyway, not too far from where these were I found a whole load of black and white film negatives and color slides that my Grandfather took. So I decided to buy a really nice scanner that can scan film and slides and will upload some of those on flickr soon.

Update: More postcards...

The Compassionate Friends

I finally finished a website for The Compassionate Friends, a national nonprofit, self-help support organization that offers friendship and guidance to bereaved parents, grandparents and siblings.

This website is specifically for the White Plains chapter which my parents have been attending for quite some time. I've joined them for a few meetings and I'm very happy to have met many of the wonderful parents who have, unfortunately, experienced what no mother or father should ever have to go through and that's losing a child. I was honored to create this website and I hope everyone enjoys it.

Duane Wardlow

My Great Uncle Duane was quite the artist back in the day. Pictured below are some of his early illustrations.










Although his charcoal and pastel work was great to say the least, I find his gauche and watercolors to be the most inspiring. I'm not entirely sure, but I think he did work on ads in the 1950's and 60's. He passed away recently but I'm very happy to have some nice memories of him. I remember him visiting our family once while we still lived in Florida. Near the end of his visit he offered to do a charcoal portrait of me. How could I say no!? I'll scan that soon. Thanks to my cousin, Shayna, for helping me scan these by the way.

He's pictured sitting here closest to the camera on the left:



You can view much more of his artwork here.

Update: Here's the portrait he did of me.

Yoshiyuki's Equipment

Here is a selection of photos I took of some of my Ojichama's (Grandfather) photography, film and audio equiptment:


Leica M3 with filters and lenses


Graflex Super Speed Graphic


Birdie Type II Slide Projector


Bell & Howell Design 122 LR 8mm Projector


Keystone A7 16mm camera

Yoshiyuki's Equipment Continued

Canon 514XL Super 8 Camera


Elmo Sound Editor 912-S


Paximat-S Electric Slide Projector


Projecto-Editor 8mm Craig by Kalart


Polaroid Land Camera Automatic 100

My Ojichama died in 1984, so I don't really have any memories of him. But it's clear he had a real passion for documenting the lives of family members and friends. I also have quite a bit of his 8mm movies, many of which I'm transferring to DVD. I'll try and make some of those available to view on here soon. Here is a picture taken of him for a Japan Airlines ad:



You can view additional pictures of his equipment here.