Stella M. Holmes Thanks WPBT for Believing in West Encounters East ®
When Stella M. Holmes encountered the groundbreaking cross-cultural works of Japanese-Brazilian artists in São Paulo, she saw something in them that captured her soul. She wanted to make them better known. As an art historian, she knew that this would require presenting their story to the public – and the best way to do this would be through the medium of film. She reinvented herself as a filmmaker. The result was a dynamic, moving documentary called West Encounters East ®. Making a film is a wonderful achievement, but for independent filmmakers, reaching its intended audience is even harder. Ms. Holmes was fortunate that, after seeing West Encounters East ®, programmers at WPBT/Channel 2, South Florida’s public television channel, were intrigued and agreed to take a chance on it. They debuted the documentary in May 2013. “That was the beginning of an amazing journey,” Ms. Holmes says. With the help of WPBT, the documentary was picked up by more than 280 television channels across the United States. It opened the Brazilian Film Festival Miami and has so far been an official selection of three film festivals. WPBT encored West Encounters East ® at 5 p.m. November 24th, a nice preview for our current exhibition of works by some of the artists featured in the film during Miami Art Week, December 3-8. “I will always be grateful to WPBT for believing in a documentary by an unknown filmmaker,” Ms. Holmes said, “and for helping me to tell a story that is very close to my heart.”
About Stella M. Holmes
A documentary filmmaker, curator and art historian, Stella M. Holmes is passionate about the power of art to bridge differences – between cultures, between people, within the human heart. She is founder and president of The Brickellian, which supports a number of arts-related businesses, including a fine-arts consultancy, a film production company, the curating and promotion of exhibitions, educational lectures, and other projects. In Miami, where she has lived for more than two decades, her creativity and passion continue to enrich the community’s cultural institutions.
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Japanese Brazil
“For Japanese people art is part of life. Its not something you can study and do. You have to live this.” About Takashi Fukushima “I like to be presented as a Brazilian artist, son of Japanese immigrants ... I think art is a difficult concept to describe. It’s like a religion, based on faith.”
Takashi Fukushima - Kylkhor - 2011 - Acrylic on canvas - 70 7/8 x 55 1/8 in
About Megumi Yuasa An autodidact, Megumi Yuasa-is considered a master in the Japanese Brazilian art of ceramics. He transforms clay into poetry, expressing philosophical thoughts in a non-verbal language. One of the artist’s trademarks is the simplicity with which he constructs his artworks with few materials, establishing extremely delicate and harmonious encounters.
THE STORY
During the early 1900s, immigrants from the Land of the Rising Sun brought to Brazil important elements of their culture – including their ancestral aesthetics. Descendants, called Nikkei, have achieved a delicate balance between Japanese and Brazilian traditions-ways of adapting to a new world- comprising the largest population of Japanese ethnic outside of Japan itself. They represent a mosaic of identity. Founded by art historian and documentary filmmaker Stella M. Holmes West Encounters East ® promotes mutual awareness and respect as modes of greater tolerance and more positive interchange in an age of challenge between differing Contemporary cultures. The works of Japanese- Brazilian artists Yutaka Toyota, Kazuo Okubo, Takashi Fukushima and Megumi Yuasa evoke vital concepts of Japanese sensibility. By forging innovative artistic vocabularies appropriate for our multicultural, globalized age, they promote a vibrant field of experiences unique to Japanese Brazil: The Crossroads Where West Encounters East.
Megumi Yuasa - Montanha Partida (Broken mountain) - 2003 - Enamelled ceramic, lead, synthetic enamel - 10 5/8 x 27 ½ x 7 7/8 in
About Yutaka Toyota
About Kazuo Okubo
Influenced by the spatial theory of Argentine artist Lucio Fontana, he creates artworks that, through the application of physical laws such as Einstein’s theory of relativity and the influence of Zen Buddhist philosophy, seek a new look – beyond the third dimension, the fourth dimension and other possibilities; showing the invisible in the visible; universal opposites such as heaven and earth, male and female, large and small, positive and negative.
Yutaka Toyota Espaço Infinito X (Infinite Space X) 2012 - Mixed technique (stainless steel, wood, aluminum and paint) 31 ½ x 14 1/8 x 4 ½ in
Inspired by the cultural mix of West and East, WEE artist Kazuo Okubo owns an experimental style. Working predominantly with human subjects, his photographs are dynamic and very suggestive.
Kazuo Okubo Untitled, 2004 From “Paisagens” series Photography. Jet printing with natural pigment ink on cotton paper 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in 1/5
“I think that my nudes are timid, like eastern people. I have a Japanese way of hiding, of concealing. I try to create some mystery, so nothing is too aggressive.”