International Surface Design Conference

These two are going to be exhibited at Weavers Guild of Minnesota starting June to the end of August.

I am so honored to have been invited to exhibit my work there conjunction with International Surface Design Conference starting next month.

I received an invitation letter from one of the committee member before I left for Senegal.

These two are my very recent work after coming back from Senegal.

I had to finish these from scratch in two weeks. Yes, it has been already two weeks since I came back from Senegal.

The challenge I had working on these two pieces were that I had to decide what material to use beforehand. I also had to make a vest and a jacket.

Though because I don't usually do it and it is not ideal way to approach in SAORI world, but I challenge myself and enjoyed it, so I guess it is okay now.

Last night, I was fortunate to go and see "Cirque Du Soleil". I got inspired by one of the costumes colors. I would love to weave with these colors. We'll see.

Now, I need to clean up the studio and start weaving next piece.

The children at the orphanage

The children at the orphanage loved SAORI.
I enjoyed the children, too and I already miss them so much!
I felt that they really like bright colors.
The banners they created can tell that their nationalities sort of.
That's good because that's SAORI.
They expressed themselves!
I could tell that they are proud to be Senegalese and they are really.

They are just picking colors what they like.
They are weaving themselves, not a fabric.
I learned watching them, too.
They don't have anything, but they are happy and they are happy to see a loom to work with.
They are happy to see what they create.
They really don't have something like that in the facility.
So, SAORI and finger knitting we happend to start teaching make them so confident.
I could see looking at their smiles.

I am back!

I am back from Senegal.
I was there for 3 weeks. Time flies!
I didn't want to leave if I could.
The children at the orphanage where I was are angels! They don't have many things like kids in Japan and the U.S., but they are happy!
I think that's the true happiness. Their smiles healed me.

We didn't have electricity during the days or at nights almost everyday.
No hot water...
No extra stuff at all, but they are all happy.

It was a life learning experience for me.
Now, I appreciate a lot that we have water, hot water, electricity and those natural resources whenever we want as much as we want.

Introducing SAORI to the children was a big hit!
Everybody wanted to weave!
Whenever I was walking towards the weaving studio, some children followed me showing their interest in weaving.
Whenever they saw me, they did "weaving gesture" telling me "I want to weave!"
(They speak either Wolof or French and I couldn't speak neither of them...shame)
Yes, I couldn't speak their languages, but they taught me many vocabularies in Wolof and now I am very interested in keep learning Wolof.
Even though we couldn't communicate much, we were able to understand (I think) each other.
There are volunteers who could speak both French and English so thanks to them that they were sometimes translators for me.

But how wonderful that the boys and I were able to communicate with no words!
Eye contact, gestures, some wolofs that I didn't understand....but I anyway, we were able to communicate most of the time by our "HEARTS".

I miss all the boys calling me "Chakuri".
Well, spelling is wrong, but it became my Senegalese nickname and I liked it.
I miss all of the boys already. I don't know how many times I looked at the pictures I took while I was there.

I now hope that they keep enjoying SAORI and hope to be back there with more Wolof vocabularies in the near future with my husband Dan.

To be continued...