Kjell Hahn

“mushi” (insect) pen, ink and pencil drawing made on Jimmy Kuehnle’s floor in Nagoya, Japan.
Music from the Katamari Damacy Soundtrack.

Portrait of George Zupp.
Graphite and Ink on paper.

So, I’ve stopped my ceramics jobs with Taihei Suguyama and John Dix up in Sasayama, Japan. Hopefully I’ll make it back up there to fire with John and see everyone again next fall. But now I have more pressing issues to deal with. For the second time in 3 months I’ve walked away from the security of employment or permanent residence in the hopes of cutting through the monotony and making the most of my short life. I’m heading east across Japan and the last three weeks I have been with Jimmy Kuehnle and George Zupp traveling around Nagoya, Kyoto and Wakayama. I plan to get to Tokyo sometime in July, but my plans are far from concrete.

Even though it might seem like frivolous vacation time, I’m trying to use this detour from the straight life as productively as possible. First of all, with my Osaka show finished I need to re-group my thoughts on future works. I’ve been mostly satisfied with the Oni Landscape and Mushi series but feel that something lacks. George was always eager to offer up opinions on the subject of art and we had several conversations about the art world, and all the mess that comes with it. Now I am considering a lot of what he said. One point that he seemed firm on is the necessity narrative, but I don’t know if I will take a full-blown narrative route as he suggests. It just seems to simple, too literal. I’d like to think that the lines and marks of a drawing can make their own dialog. Anyway, its just something I am thinking about in the back of my mind. I guess that is why I am including this portrait of George. Even though he is a thief, he is still my senpai.

Aside from regrouping my thoughts about my own work I’m trying to familiarize myself with the art world of Japan. If you are employed, it doesn’t matter how much of your free time you put into your art- its just never going to be enough. The art process is so much work I wonder how anyone could be satisfied making a few pieces on the weekends. Since quitting my jobs I’ve been to more art openings and met more artists in the last few months than I’ve met in the last few years here. I have a few promising leads for future shows, but nothing decided yet. I do understand the whole thing is fool-hearted. Taihei even told me that I was being stupid when I quit, but the last thing I want is to have regrets about NOT having tried- looking back at this time in 40 years and knowing I wasted it. So I’m off the grid, searching around for something to make sense of all this.

It makes me think of something my good friend Jimmy said, “Sometimes I think those homeless guys laying around in the park, reading the paper in the afternoon, know something we don’t.”

I traveled around Japan with the artist and professional plagiarist, George Zupp for three weeks in June.

Before his return to Texas we worked with Jimmy Kuehnle and Sayako Tsunekage (Tsune) to make a series of drawings.

I’m looking forward to working together with George in the future in his San Marcos chicken shack.

This one is for my new art sensei, George Zupp.
Pen and ink drawing of a oni goat made in Jimmy Kuehnle’s kitchen in Nagoya Japan.

This animation was made with Himeji Higashi ESS club in 2005.

I made this video with 9 students from English club while working at Himeji Higashi high school. While the production value isn’t exactly Hollywood, it still took us several months and a few tears to make. We started off with a lot of energy on this project, but I soon learned that a 16 year-old girl’s first priority in life isn’t working under 2000 watts of lights, inching tiny cardboard puppets around for hours on end.

Regrettably, I put in far more hours than the actual club members but tried to get them to do as much of the work as possible. The story was written entirely by them, and we all worked together to make and animate the puppets.

Since all the club members were girls playing male roles they forced me to be Dorthy’s voice. It probably would have been better w/o my voice, though no one wanted that much screen time. Chiaki “Robert” Sugahara really come up to the plate on that one with her role as The Scarecrow.

Now the collaboration is on. George Zupp and I are going to have a Youtube video challenge during his brief vacation in Japan, that is if Chicken George can actually finish one video in the next two weeks.

George Zupp has taken me under his wing and shown me the way to be  a true Internet artist.  He has mastered the technique of living in the moment and creating chaos and beauty with the same fluid  brush stroke of life.