Sheets of paper, soft, textured, and pliable, hang from the ceiling in knots and groves. Spare and often abstract, the sheets resemble modern paintings. Isao Nakamura, a papermaker and artist from Haigyu, a small town in Japan’s Shikoku Mountains, created everything in this room.
Nakamura favors motifs drawn from nature. He often embeds leaves, grasses, or strips of bark, as inclusions in the paper’s fiber matrix. In other sheets, the artist manipulates the paper’s texture and thickness to create patterns reminiscent of Abstract Expressionist painters like Franz Kline and Mark Rothko. Even when the works can be read as figurative (as when Nakamura depicts the harvest moon), they shy away from verisimilitude and depict the subject through the barest of outlines.
These sheets of paper, handmade by Nakamura, represent the latest incarnation of kamisuki, the traditional art of Japanese papermaking. Misako Mitsui, the curator of the Museum of Craft and Folk Art’s current exhibition, Beyond Craft: Kamisuki, Paper as Process, describes the exhibition as a forest grove.
Mitsui locates Nakamura’s appeal in his art’s ability to bring the viewer into harmony with nature. According to the curator, Nakamura’s art grows out of a deep and rich tradition, but remains modern and attuned to contemporary culture. Nakamura’s practice represents a living link between civilization and the land. He continues to produce washi (Japanese handmade paper) in the traditional manner, without chemicals or mechanical equipment.
Nakamura’s practice is a deliberate archaism. Nakamura’s village, Haigyu, was once a renowned center of paper production. Villagers specialized in a smooth, white, and translucent paper, created from the kozo plant. Due to the village’s mountain environment, the paper produced in Haigyu was particularly fine. As Haigyu’s signature export, this paper became eponymous with the village. Due to its fineness and translucence, haigyu paper was especially well-suited for shoji screens, and sustained Haigyu’s economy through World War II.