SHE KNITS PLAYFULLNESS

Artist who Knits Playgrounds for Kids

Toshiko Horiuchi  McAdam is an artist that is not your everyday knitter.  My Grandmother knitted, my aunts, and my Mother, but they knitted sweaters and the like.  They were skilled, but Toshiko has taken knitting to a whole new level!

Can you imagine if you were  a child to play in this wonder world!   from google image for education only

Toshiko Horiuchi McAdam, artist, knitter 

Who is Toshiko and how did her journey lead her to these massive projects she does.  I would call them "art installations for fun." Lets she what we can learn about this amazing woman. 

"Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam is a leading fibre artist in Canada and Japan, using knitting, crochet, and knot making techniques to create her work. Currently, her work focuses on creating large, interactive textile environments.

MacAdam was born in Japan in 1940 but soon moved to Japanese-occupied Manchuria with her family during World War II. When the Soviet Union took over the area in 1945, MacAdam and her family were forced to flee and eventually returned to Japan. Later, MacAdam attended the Tama Fine Art Institute in Japan and went on to study in the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where she received her masters of fine arts degree.^[1] After graduating, MacAdam worked for Boris Kroll Fabrics, an acclaimed textile design company in New York City. She then went on to teach at universities across the United States and Japan, including theColumbia University Teachers College, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the University of Georgia and the Kyoto Junior College of Art.

Currently, MacAdam teaches a textiles and fashion course entitled "Fiber Fabric Fashion" at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and runs Interplay Design and Manufacturing with her husband, Charles MacAdam, in Bridgeport, Nova Scotia.^[2] " from Wikipedia

Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam  

The video below is about Toshiko's art installation playgrounds.  Just click on the arrow in the center of the screen.

I love this artist and what she has created. One of the parts I especially loved reading about her was that she noticed that children were climbing her installations in museums.  Rather than getting upset, she took interest and consulted a landscape specialist and others and altered her style to large installations with rainbow colors for children!  Amazing!  Learning and adapting is a creative skill set.

OUR LIVES ARE NOT SEPARATE FROM OUR ART!

OUR LIVES BECOME ART AND VICE VERSA
A discussion            

  Part 1

Yayoi Kasama                                                             google image

This morning I was watching a national news morning show which highlighted an artist I have been interested in since becoming aware of her fantastic long career.  She is Japanese, she is in her 80's, she has voluntarily lived in a mental facility for the last 30 years, and she is obsessive about dots.  Her name is Yayoi Kusama(click).  She is one of the most important artist of our time and one of the most pioneering women artist of our time.  It calls to mind something about the creative nature of our minds, imagination, and the healing nature of the arts.  I think there are people who think all artists are mad, or border or mental illness and there are some famous ones:  Van Gogh is an example.  He also struggled with his mental health and turned to the arts.  Caravaggio was another, a man obsessed with violence and pain; he also turned to the arts.  I think what we must see in this path is that people turn to the arts to heal and to survive.  The arts also offer an avenue to  self expression that is denied in other parts of our society.  Jackson Pollack drank and smoked to much, 

de kooning            google  image

de Kooning painted very scary looking women, and so on. Are there happy artist with life without drama...of course.  But I would say we reach to the arts for many reasons, to express ourselves in a way we can not in any other way.  We are the sensitives of society, we absorb and we reflect our times.  Those sensitivities drives people to the arts, to express or to heal or to communicate.

Now I will talk about my life personally and how it influences my art.  I was born in Mississippi in a time of great prejudice against African Americans...it drove me to express the need for all people to be treated equally.  I grew up in Florida on the Gulf Coast in a city of Cuban and Italian Immigrants.  I grew up want to learn and to express what I learned about various cultures.  I lived in Asia and the Philippines, I learned to respect all cultures and become a citizen of the world, not one place.  I learned how my country could effect other countries for good and for bad.  I learned other people may have better ideas than my own country and that we are not the center of the universe.  I taught mentally handicapped children, mentally disturbed children.  I learned what prejudice existed against children and adults who had no choice in how they were born.  I learned no matter what intelligence level you are you can be an artist, you can be creative.  I lived in the  Middle East and learned not one religion or faith is better than another.  It all began to come out in my art...cultures, the world, rights for all peoples, peace, prejudice, the horrors of hatred and war, my travels, my friendships of other people in other cultures...and now for the last 10 years plus the struggle of watching my Mother struggle with the effects of massive stroke, caretaking, nursing homes, how age and dementia and alzheimers destroys people we love.  And now I find a need to express that in my art...I look to art to heal and to help me as I go through this journey with my Mother.  As I write this I realize I need to break it into sections of interest.  Our first subject is creativity, madness, and art as the healer.  Secondly a close up look at artist who are artists struggling with mental and physical health.
Thirdly I will take you on my personal journey with my art and life...showing you where the experience crosses over into the art....and I would say, we as artists are not always aware when or how that happens.  It is like when you dream a dream...the symbols in the dream may not make since to you, but a friend will point something out...and you think-how did I not see that!

A Great Story and a Great Artist....

Yayoi Kusama is an amazing artist and she happens to be 82 also.  I once remember my friend Ann saying when you get old you become invisible.  I didn't understand it at first, but then with time and experiencing aging myself, then I did.  I also remember when I was teaching young children art, I came home with a film on Louise Nevelson to review.  The film showed her older, but interesting dramatic makeup and clothes.  My Mother, who was not happy about wrinkles and aging...said, "well at least I can be interesting!"
There is a tendency to think only the young are the only ones going about the important things in life, and in the art world where people are thinking of emerging artists, they usually do not think of artists of age.   Yayoi's latest installation in Australia at Queen's Head Gallery is just stunning.  She handed out thousands of stickers to children and let them put them where ever they wanted in a mock living room.  The transformation is amazing! How could I have not known about this wonderful artist before!?