Steadily chewing away at this block for the past few days ... It's the 'key', such as it is; really just the darkest of the blacks. The only place that there is a specific 'outline' is on the body of the fish.

And over the next couple of weeks I'll be making incremental additions to the web site for the upcoming series; today I finalized the schedule ...

For 19 years I held an annual exhibition every January, but the last few of those were all 'less than successful', and rather than continue pouring money down a black hole (exhibitions here in Tokyo are expensive!) I decided to stop for a while. This made sense from another angle too, as the Solitudes project was clearly going to take a few years, and it seemed logical to wait until completion before showing it. So I just put 'exhibitions' out of my mind ...

But here we are ... with the series coming to an end, there is a decision to be made - have a show, or just hunker down and save my pennies for food?

Before I could make a sensible decision, I needed some data; it was time to get on the train. So one day late last year I printed out a listing of galleries in the Ginza area of Tokyo, along with their rental rates, and headed out to do some scouting. It didn't take long to learn that things are really in flux: around a quarter of them were gone. Shuttered. And my list wasn't all that old. The recession is obviously pounding those places hard.

I wasn't sure whether this was good news, or bad. With far fewer places available, would this make it more difficult to find available space in one of the remaining ones? It turned out - after making inquiries at a few places that seemed suitable (size / price) - that far from being booked up, most places had a calendar full of holes, something that was completely inconceivable just a couple of years ago. In the days when I was booking my annual exhibition in Shinkuku every year for example, I had to put my name down for the week I wanted as far as two years in advance. It seems those days are gone.

Anyway, long story short, after plenty of walking around and looking at available spaces, I settled on one, and - after a bit of 'discussion' - negotiated what I thought was a good rate, and booked it for a date this spring.

It's difficult (impossible) to maintain a stream of updates when all I'm doing is carving. The printing stages give people something to look at, but carving is certainly not something that is very interesting to watch!

But things have been moving forward steadily, and maybe it's time to give you a sneak peek at the work done so far (click for enlargement):

Some of these blocks are 'easy' (less detail) and some are pretty busy. To keep the progress of the work balanced, I've been alternating between the two types. I'm now doing the keyblock, which will take a week or so, and then when that's done, will flip these five over and do the other sides, which are very similar to the faces you see here.

So it'll be a few weeks yet before there is any chance of getting to the proofing stage.

In the meantime, lots of other things are getting done. The winter newsletter is now out for translation, the preparation work for the next series is progressing well, and my explorations in Tokyo the other day turned out to be successful.

Eh? Explorations in Tokyo? Ah, perhaps I didn't mention that yet ... You can get an update by checking out this weekend's entry in the 'A Story A Week' series ...

The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 3] ...

Why the three week gap? Well, getting the design worked out accounts for at least a week of that time, and as for what kind of work got done on the rest of the 'missing' days, some of the announcements that will be made here over the next few weeks should fill you in! :-)

The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 2] ...

Lines and Colors is one of my favourite blogs, and even when I have one of my periodic prunings of the feeds in my RSS reader, this one always survives! Nobody working in the arts fields should miss the parade of images accompanied by knowledgeable commentary that Mr. Parker provides on a regular basis.

The quality of the work he features is very high indeed, and I am honored to be included among his choices!

One evening I sat down to send out a holiday greeting to my friends in the group, and before I knew it, a visitor had dropped down the chimney. 12 years later, the message is still fun to read. Here it is, partnered with an illustration that my (then) Japanese coach - Takayoshi Sakazaki - created for it. (Or if you wish, you can listen to it, in .mp3 format.)

So far in this little sequence of posts discussing some business aspects of my work, we've looked at some currency issues, and begun to think about the next project. I mentioned three factors that would be important considerations in making that decision:

• my own satisfaction
• customer satisfaction
• economics

But before I get too deeply into trying to work out a future project based around those things, I want to try a little 'thought experiment'. If there were no such constraints in place; if I had a completely free hand to do whatever I wanted ... what would I do? What would I make?

Now that's actually not an easy question to answer. If you think about it for yourself (with respect to your own life and work), you will find that, although any of us can quickly come up with suggestions on this and that, it's by no means certain that such suggestions would actually make sense in the long term. The classic example of this is the guy who 'wins the lottery'. Sure, it's easy at first; quit your job, buy a big house, take the great vacation, etc. etc. But then what? Having unlimited resources doesn't help you, if you don't have some kind of motivation or structure to what you are doing.

If all my constraints were suddenly removed, and I became free to make (say) a project that wouldn't have been feasible because the result would have been too expensive, what happens next? I make the thing, it sits there. What do I do, give it away? What would it mean to have made it? Sure, maybe it would have been a technical achievement for Dave, but without the integration with society that has been stripped away by the 'magic wand' support from 'outside' ... so what?

I'm perhaps being clumsy in my attempt to express this idea. There was a Dilbert cartoon in my newspaper just the other day (very strange timing, actually) about this.

Now I don't believe that particular phrase is true, but the point Wally was making - the stuff this guy is producing must be of no value to society, as demonstrated by the fact that he can't make a living from it - does come close to my own thinking.

Some of you might fire back, "What about examples like Van Gogh? His work was not 'valued' in his own lifetime, yet we now recognize how good it is ... etc. etc.," but I think that's kind of a red herring. Sure, we can find such 'special case' examples if we look for them. But I'm talking about normal people, in normal daily life. If nobody can/will 'consume' the thing that somebody is 'producing', then - by my particular definition - this is an indication that the person on the production side is out of line.

It's not that what he is producing is 'no good', but if he can't find - or make (which is where Van Gogh failed) - a place for it to fit, then there has been no point. The book that goes unread might as well not have been written.

I fully recognize that I may be 'wrong' on this. But it's the way that I have approached my work for all these years that I have been making prints. I want/expect my stuff to be valued by people, and it seems that the only real method available to measure that is to put it on the market. People buy it ... hey, it must be worthwhile! Nobody buys it ... oops, you're on the wrong track ...

So, to return to the question I raised, "if I had a completely free hand to do whatever I wanted ... what would I make?" I'm going to try and answer it, keeping in mind that I don't want to work in isolation, exempted from market forces. I want people to be collecting/using my stuff!

Here goes (in no particular order, just as they occur to me ...):

Well, now that we've 'settled' the question of how I should handle foreign exchange, let's move on to bigger fish. Very big fish!

With the My Solitudes series scheduled to come to a conclusion sometime in March, I have to begin preparing for what comes next. Here in Japan, April is the month when most things 'get going': the school year begins in April, as do employment contracts for those who graduated in March. Companies and institutions do all their major internal shuffling on March 31st/April 1st, and this is when promotions take effect, when people retire, and when many people are re-assigned to new positions. For me to have a new series beginning on April 1st is - in Japan at least - perfect timing.

Now all I need is a perfect idea!

Thanks to those who contributed suggestions to yesterday's post about the currency question ... As I mentioned in the Discussion section on that page, I have added a little popup currency converter:

I've also added this to my main 'Order Form' page with each price in the list independently linked to a converted amount.

These are now working very nicely! I should have done this a long time ago!

But ...

This doesn't solve another of the problems with multiple currencies - the fact that rates change over time, and the cost of a subscription to any of my print series thus has a 'floating' price.

For example, if you live in the US, and had signed up to collect the Hanga Treasure Chest about 6 months ago, the price of 2,000 yen per print was about $20.50 ... But the print I send this month - at the same price of 2,000 yen - would cost you $22.20

How much will you have to pay next month? More, or less? Who knows ...

And I think this uncertainty is perhaps hurting my subscription orders.

So the question is whether or not to set the price in the customer's own currency. For a US-based collector, the price for those prints could be set at (say) $21.00 each, and they would be guaranteed that it wouldn't change during the course of their subscription to any particular set of prints.

As the currency started to vary over time, they would continue to pay the same amount, but I would receive either less, or more, as circumstances dictated. Would they feel cheated, or would they feel 'protected'? It would all depend on what happened as time went by ...

And of course I myself would have much more 'exposure' to currency fluctuations, something I have been protected against so far by having a 'prices in yen' policy.

If you were a potential collector looking at my price information, would this make much difference to you? Do you think my 'prices in yen' policy has been hurting?

The series continues in If you were my manager : Part Three ...

With that job out of the way, I can get back to normal work, so I have now begun the second run of Forest in Winter - another 100+ sheets. With no decisions to be made, it won't take so long, so by about the 22nd or 23rd I'll be done.

The next job up will be the final print in the Solitudes series - Seacoast in Spring - but I think I'll save work on that one until after the turn of the year. I have the basic 'idea' already in mind, and although it's not going to be an easy one to get down on paper, at least I won't be struggling to think about where to start ...

And ... with just one print now left in the series, it's time to start seriously thinking about what will come next. As usual, there are a lot of ideas jostling for attention, and many paths I could take. As I sit here printing, the 'discussions' inside my head go back and forth, back and forth. 'Carver Dave' has lots of ideas about what he wants to make. 'Printer Dave' looks at some of those ideas and shakes his head ... And of course 'Manager Dave' stands over the both of them, shaking his head even more vigorously!

And that gives me an idea. I have no 'manager' of course; I work completely independently. Because of this though, my decisions sometimes turn out to be somewhat on the impractical side of things. The scroll project a few years back is a perfect example of this - 'Carver Dave' was given his head, and the result was near bankrupcy!

Would you like to sit in the manager's chair for a while? If I offer some of my thoughts on my business policies, and on possible projects for next year's work, would you be willing to proffer some feedback, guidance, and 'advice'? I have to tell you right up front that this will be a purely 'honorary' position ... no 15% cut of my profits for you, I'm afraid! (Although I suppose that doesn't matter anyway - 15% of nothing is ... ) Let's give this a try! Please feel free to put your 'manager' hat on, and put any suggestions into the Discussion form below!

Please visit the Stages of Printing page and see the prints come to life as you watch!

I snapped a few more pictures after knocking off this evening, just a few minutes ago. The light hanging over the bench is giving a bad colour cast to some of these shots, but anyway, you can still see what's going on (these are clickable for enlargements).

I can't see this much detail while I'm cutting! Once I'm done, I'll pull a quick proof, and will then go back over the whole thing, touching up here and there where lines are too fat, or badly shaped, or nicked. I can see plenty of places that will need it ...

This is a pretty hard block, and it has a very steep 'sakame' (opposing grain); the clearing chisel will only work in one direction. In those places where I can't get 'in there' and have to work against the grain, you can see where the bottom of the cleared area gets very torn. This is a difficult piece of wood, for sure ...

It's such a pleasure to be carving something with nice curves and lines for a change!

I'm not going to show the entire image yet of course - you'll have to wait until January 1st to see that - but people who have read/listened to the David's Choice eBook that I issued last month may perhaps be able to put 2+2 together ... looking at these little snapshots, and thinking about some of the comments I made on one of the prints in the book ...

This next picture shows how clear the image on the block can become when using thin gampi paper for the hanshita.

The area at the upper right is the face-down gampi; below that is an area where I have rubbed lightly with a slightly moistened finger, to remove most of the body of the paper, leaving just the image lines. It just doesn't get any clearer than this!