murasaki on "kasai ayumi no yume no hahen" and the imagery of Kasai Ayumi:
i first discovered the artwork of Kasai Ayumi in 1997. a close friend of mine in high school, who was from Tokyo, owned a book of her collected works. i found it as i was browsing his bookshelf, and came across a thinly bound red book, imprinted with Japanese characters, of which i knew none at the time. as i opened it, i was immediately overcome with the sheer beauty and vividness of her images.
i sensed something very familiar in it, yet quite alien at the same time. seeing how much i was taken with it, my friend entrusted me with possession of this sacred book. i treasured it with my life (as i still do today) and showed it around to my friends and teachers to expose its beauty to others. the more that i stared at her linework, her color, her figures, and her auras, i wanted to enter into her world as completely as i could, because i felt so much affinity towards it.
as a result of this desire, i began a series of drawings called "Fragments of Kasai Ayumi's Dreams" ("kasai ayumi no yume no hahen"). in this series, i sought out to incorporate my artistic sensitivity with her graceful rendering, and create a world that only we would share, if only vicariously.
for each image in this series, i first take a figure from one of her images, then immerse it in my own self-created context. sometimes, i use two or more figures, each from different images, in order to show connections that i make personally between them that might not otherwise be seen. through this process, i am able to spread her uniquely aesthetic articulation, as well as express my deeply felt hommage towards an artist who has changed my life.
as i mentioned above, i feel a very strong connection with Kasai Ayumi's work. this is not only because i love her imagery so much, but because of an experience i had during the summer of 1998. at that time, i was preparing myself to embark upon my first journey to Japan. before i left, i had completed 2 drawings in my series, and was unsure of what to create for a third. i then decided that the next image would be completely of my own design, just in Kasai Ayumi's style.
so i made a sketch of a young woman. her rib cage was exposed, and a young man was kneeling behind her, playing her rib cage with a violin bow, creating pure music out of her body. after i made this sketch, i left it home and then traveled to Japan. while i was in Japan, one of my goals was to find another book of her work. so my friend helped me to order a book called "tsuki yo e" from a book store in Tokyo. when the book arrived, we went back to the store to pick it up. when it was handed to me by the clerk, i gazed upon it and there, on the cover, was the exact same image of a young man playing a woman's rib cage with a violin bow. i had never seen the image before in my life, so there was no way for me to have known about it.
for a brief moment, i was shocked, but then i realized that it made perfect sense. it was no surprise at all. i had become so immersed into her work, that i had become part of that world, and always will be in some way or another. when i returned home from Japan, the sketch that i made had disappeared...
the online gallery of these works is both a way for self-promotion, and for promotion of her work as well. i want the world to know the imagery of Kasai Ayumi, and i wish to share this collective vision with any who wish to look upon it.
-murasaki (7/11/00)
