Full Moon Coffee Shop
My classes have been off for a couple of weeks with the exception of watercolor, and I’ve been brewing up some new ideas for future classes, and I’m very excited. I hope I get the chance to offer them. I will keep you posted here.
On the top of my mind right now is a book that I just finished reading last night, The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki translated from the Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood. I just loved this book! I want to read it again and again. It is so magical and sweet and light and lovely. It’s listed as Sci-Fi on the library label attached to its spine. I don’t know how I would classify it, and as I write that, I wish we humans didn’t feel the need to classify things so much in life. I guess it can be helpful when you’re trying to find things in the library (sometimes! Though sometimes it can muddy the waters further. That’s a whole other discussion! We could get technical about cross referencing here…) I know my mind wants to classify things, and it’s often frustrating. Anyway, this book has wonderful elements of magical realism, which I associate with Salmon Rushdie, especially his book The Satanic Verses (the scene where one of the characters eats butterflies!!) and with Latin American authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who I could never get into, but all of my friends really loved.
One of the wonderful discoveries about this book is that the author got the idea for it from some art that she viewed. I read this in the acknowledgements at the end of the book. As I thought about this, she certainly did not have to provide credit to the artwork, but I am so glad she did. First of all, it shows that ideas can come from anywhere and everywhere if we are open to them. It also shows that the author is humble, to extend credit to the artwork that inspired her incredible and original novel. What a beautiful thing. This magical little book seemed like it found me. I like to scroll through the new books listing on the library catalog every couple of weeks, and I would say that the cover, title, and the fact that the book was translated from Japanese all drew me to put a hold on it. I’m so glad I did! Sometimes it’s great to follow your instincts without thinking too much, you never know where it might lead you, especially in your art!
In The Full Moon Coffee Shop the boundaries between dreams and reality are blurred, and the world becomes the magical place it always was when the characters wake up to it. This reminds me of watercolor. In the last session of my class, we played with boundaries and how water will serve as a boundary for paint. You can paint a shape (or anything) with water and drop in some paint, and the paint will stay within the water. We experimented with concentrated watercolors that come with eye droppers and dropped the colors right into some water shapes we had painted. There is something really beautiful and satisfying about dropping the colors into the water and seeing what happens, and how they will stay inside the boundaries we painted. What does staying inside of boundaries mean to you? What about breaking through boundaries? How can we use boundaries? The first step is to become aware of boundaries (or the contrasting lack of them) and then go from there! We can try to tip the paper to use gravity, or we can just sit back and watch what unfolds. The choice is ours.
What I’m watching: Kelly Eddington Watercolors YouTube Channel
A great touch in her videos is the music (it is so powerful and driving) and the amazing pacing. They are beautiful to watch.
Reading: Full Moon Coffee Shop, of course. Wish there were other books by this author I could get in print from the library! I will be waiting! In the meantime, I’m continuing to journey along with Caleana Sardothian in the amazing fantasy Throne of Glass fantasy series by Sarah J. Maas.
Listening to: Seven, Taylor Swift (I enjoy this album - Folklore - and read an article in the New York Times a few years ago that she uses a lot of nature words in her songs. The article is entitled: “Taylor Swift is Singing Us Back to Nature”). Anyone who speaks or sings or references nature in their art is awesome in my book!
