For the past 3 years, The Koala and I have been heavily involved with the Japanese Art Festival. Neither of us are Japanese, but we have a fondness of Japanese art, culture and food.

It all began when a friend who was helping with the organisation for 2010’s festival asked if we wanted to submit some artwork. Since then, we’ve not only submitted work, but also branded, advertised, promoted and helped to organise different aspects of the event. The festival was well advertised this year with flyers and posters distributed all across Auckland, magazine advertising, radio advertising, and of course the mother of all advertising for free events: Facebook. It’s a fairly big task logistically and it all paid off seeing all the people that came to the festival to enjoy the art and various events over the 3 days. It’s been a great learning curve for us and it’s great to have a hand in something like this. The festival is now in its fourth year and is held at the Aotea Centre in the heart of Auckland City.

The aim of the festival is to expose contemporary Japanese art to the New Zealand public. This isn’t art in an art gallery or a museum type space. This is art for the people. The festival was free for visitors and the central location meant that it was accessible to everyone. The huge range of art on display included traditional papercut, painting, drawing, sculpture, digital art, origami and everything in between and visitors came in all different shades, shapes and sizes. Other side events included live drawing and charity auctions, a Dr Sketchy live drawing session, tea ceremonies, calligraphy demonstrations and Taiko drumming.

This year I exhibited a special edition of Tofu Tuesday and this was well received by both adults and kids. I got a real kick out of hearing people squeal when they laid eyes on my board. One child even had to be escorted away from my board!

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See photos from last year’s event here. Last year, I also submitted bunny themed oil paintings. In fact, there was a pikachu in one of the paintings I did last year too. You can view them here and here.

I look forward to next years festival! I’ll have to think up something even more bunny and more Japanese 🙂

Check out previous Tofu Tuesday posts here.