San Diego artist, Kelsey Brookes, blogs up a recent trip he took there to do some live painting at the Green Room Festival in Yokohama. RVCA asked me to go to Japan and paint at something called the Green Room Festival. Traveling and painting are 2 of my top 3 favorite things to do in the world (surfing is the other), so when ever I get the chance to combine 2 of the top 3 I do it.

For all those who do not surf, the green room is what surfers call getting barreled.

I absolutely love flying. It scares the crap out of me too, but mostly I am amazed. I mean think about it... There's 500 people, close to one million pounds of weight, traveling at close to the speed of sound at 40,000 feet for about 11 hours from LAX to Japan's Narita airport. It really is amazing when you think about it.

Because of the Pig Flu thing the arrival terminal at Narita was under quarantine. We had to give medical statements and travel history and get our temperature taken before we were allowed into the country. That yellow paper was my evidence that I had been through the quarantine process.

This is Tetz. He is from RVCA Japan and picked me up from the airport. He was the man in charge of organizing everything and showing me around. Lucky for me he spoke English. No one speaks English in Japan.....except Tetz.

The festival was held on a massive floating teak pier. Parts of the pier were landscaped with grass making it feel like a big park. They had 3 different stages, a big art gallery, and lots of rad art installations sprinkled around.

This was the entrance to the art gallery. The whole thing had a hippy, surf-art kinda vibe. Lots of hemp rope, drift wood, colored yarns and teepees.

This was the main stage and if you look closely, you can see that on either side of the stage are huge screens with the title of the event written in English. Japan is weird like that....not too many people speak conversational English but lots of words in advertisements were in English.

This is some of the guys from RVCA Japan setting up the RCVA booth at the festival, which would also double as my studio for a few days.

Utaka, Gin, Me and Tetz.

Here I am working away with my studio assistants carefully observing the progress. They worked for stickers.

These little dudes hung out for a bit and helped out with picking colors for some of the smaller paintings.

Every once and a while I had to stop painting and take photos.

Apparently homeless looking white guys with long hair and beards don't make it out to Japan too often.

This drift wood tree house thing was so rad. It was made by a guy named Takashi Kobayashi and his helpers; all together they are called the Tree House People. They make these tree house installations all over the world and collaborate with artists to help finish them off.

Takashi also has an awesome tree house cafe in Harajuku that is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in Tokyo.

Such rad vibes. He made this tree house with loads of sea trash and drift wood.

Here is a zoomed out look at my temporary studio.

This is the finished large painting I did while I was there.

These are some smaller pantings I did while I worked on the big one by leaving them under the larger canvas while I painted. The paint would drip off and down onto these little guys and I would paint in what I saw. I just finished off what chance and accident had started for me.

I did a whole bunch of these black and gold figures while I was over there, but a load of them were stolen while I went to the bathroom and walked around for a bit. No big deal I just made more.

I have loads more of these that I did on the random different bits of paper (receipts, my quarantine forms etc.) while I was in Japan. I'll post them in a bit.

This was the last thing I saw while I was in Japan.

And this was what I found when I got on the plane. Me alone with 4 seats to stretch out on for the 10 hours back to the US. Welcome to first class Mr. Brookes!

Words and photos Kelsey Brookes {moscomment}

< Prev		Next >