Happy (Lunar) New Year

The Year of the dragon as inked by Yuri Shimojo

Ryuho, 1669 from Japanese Death Poems, 1986

Happy New Year. Lunar new year, or lunisolar new year. January first was proclaimed the beginning of the year by some medieval pope in order to sync Easter up more mathematically with the seasons and then gradually, sometimes begrudgingly, adopted around the world as the standard calendar for doing business. This year I hope you will join me in rejecting this Gregorian timeline in favour of the lunar calendar which according to the old Chinese calendar begins Saturday 10 February. here are my reasons: 1. The moon’s mysterious phases feel older and more compelling than the math 2. Popes. 3. I really like an animal-based zodiac 4. January was a bit of blur and I still don’t feel like my year has official begun yet. 5. I want to share with you my feelings about the year of the dragon.

One of the most incredible things about the filming of The Colour of Ink now available in the USA on Prime Video and in Canada (for free!) on the NFB site was meeting some of my ink and natural colour heroes from around the world. Some of these meetings were with old friends, some were with new collaborators. For anyone who has seen the film (or regular readers of this newsletter) will recognize Yuri Shimojo. Long before I met her she was studying the history and materiality and spirit of inks usually a solid sometime aged stick of traditional ink ground on stones with water in black or grey or vermillion. Yuri as you will learn from the film has fed-ex’d dog blood serum to me overnight, has been a friend and co-exhibitor, tester and who has made some of the most exquisite artworks from the sometimes highly experimental inks I have mailed to her New York studio. She is in Japan now in a inspiring room looking over the rooftops with two long-lasting one of a kind inks that I sent to her. And there it is probably already tomorrow one moon-phase ahead but I wanted to share with you all her take on the talismanic inky image she printed to celebrate this lunar unrolling. If the print is any indication we might all be in for a powerful, fire-tinged new year. Following the image some writing that I wrote when I first saw it unedited. I am curious what you see in it.

You can buy a limited edition print here. Hand pulled Silkscreen Print on Hand deckled Torinoko Washi Japanese paper by the master printmaker @keigoprints, New York . Maybe you need to buy one for a friend.

First you notice the clean lines and almost spray painted tones. The balance. The rosehip red is the orange just before red. You notice its balance dancing like calligraphy.  An almost logo, almost tattoo, almost street art, almost ancient symbol. It is simple but like the moon is simple glistening, alive, eternal and calm with its own life and death confidence.  

It rolls circular: of electrons of tunnels and of mirrors. A circle holding complete opposites facing eachother but not quite touching tongues of fire of heart of metallic life-spark. Lifespark pulled repelled concentrated by their not touching that allows each to see almost to taste its opposite matcher. To lick the air between their open mouths their open eyes. They are tied at their beginnings at their ends, umbilical physical undeniable as gift ribbon undeniable as pain and they are burning at this fine-pointed end too. Tied tubes. Burning embers. 

This is not an ouroboros, or a yin yang not one single thing that contains two opposites. This is a relationship, an entanglement a shape eternal but made by two by effort, with bed-head and spikes guarding them at the back roughened for the world. They are together by effort and by the sliver of energy where they almost meet as minds. The never complete ring that is nevertheless a perfect complete fearful strong and delicate act. A frame. A bower. Because it is New Year we must enter this incomplete thing called New with our defiant creative tongues of loss. Enter the dragon.

Thoughts on the New Year? Let me know.

—Jason