Written on May 25, 1991 [Permalink]

May 24

A mixed day, quite disappointing in one way, and promising in another .... A phone call came in from a lady in Edo-gawa-ku at about 10:00, 'I read the Yomiuri newspaper this morning ...' So today's the day. Michiyo explained our stuff, and we arranged to send a set of 10 out to her, with some kind of arrangement to pay month by month. I then got out a sheet of paper to keep by the phone to write down the names and addresses as the calls came in. I didn't know what the article said (they faxed us a copy in the late afternoon), and didn't really know what to expect... What I didn't expect was what really happened. Nothing. There were no more calls from interested people. None. (I discount the call from a man in downtown Tokyo who read the story and called to ask if he could get English lessons!). One million copies of the story ...

Michiyo and I sat down in the evening and tried to think about what this meant. Only one in a million is interested enough to call us? Obviously that's not so, as we have more than 15 customers here in Hamura alone, with a population of 50,000. Are newspaper stories just unproductive? We went back through the files, to see how many of our 30-odd present customers came from newspaper articles. One. The rest came from local contacts, gallery exhibitions, and magazine articles, notably the 'Foto' story.

The lesson seems to be: don't sit and wait for next January and next year's little exhibition. Get out there, find some more galleries in other locations, and hold more exhibitions. This is going to take some doing. It will mean getting out of here more often, and will be considerably more expensive. (It will also be next to impossible after Michiyo has left for Canada ...) In any case, the message came through loud and clear today, as I sat and worked on the poster printing, and listened to the telephone not ringing ...

On the up side, there were two calls of interest. The first was from a company making a show for TV Tokyo. The producer there had seen the SERAI article, and wanted to highlight my work on a short 6 minute filler program that airs every Thursday night. They want to come next Friday for filming. Suits me ...

The second call was from the producer of a noon-time show on TV Asahi. He saw the Yomiuri article today (not a total washout ...), and wanted to feature me on their show next Tuesday, with filming here on Monday ('from about 10:00, into the evening ...'). There seems to also be a possibility of me going into the studio with my stuff to do something 'live' on the Tuesday. That would be fun!

Like I said, a disappointing and promising day. Oh yes, the colour printing went OK, but I just didn't have the energy to tackle that blue background today. That will be tomorrow morning's chore ...

May 25

Done! I feel like putting my arm up in a sling for a while, and I'm sure glad that there's no hyaku-nin series printing waiting for me. Now that it's all done though, I'm glad that I took it on. It's been very good experience doing something this different from the normal work, and my respect for Seki-san has gone up quite a few notches ... It was difficult getting them all dry, as there's nowhere near enough room in the house to spread them out. I had to do it in stages.