{"id":9984,"date":"2015-04-18T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-18T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/?p=9984"},"modified":"2017-03-15T15:57:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T14:57:13","slug":"takako-hirai-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/takako-hirai-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Takako Hirai"},"content":{"rendered":"

Takako’s story is as unique as her\u00a0works: After studying painting in Hiroshima, she looks for new inspiration, something to\u00a0enrich her way of\u00a0working with color. By chance, she gets to know\u00a0Arianna Gallo, and despite cumbersome visa processes she always comes back to Ravenna.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u00a0discover it\u00a0only at second glance, the figure in ISTINTO<\/em> that blends completely with its\u00a0surroundings and stands out almost exclusively by the different size of the tesserae<\/em>\u00a0around it. Again and again, I was looking\u00a0at this work of Takako, when I made\u00a0my first mosaic course in Ravenna, intrigued by the soulful composition of cold and warm shades of green, and the contrast of elongated, rambling\u00a0grasses and plants with\u00a0the busy\u00a0background.<\/p>\n

\"istinto_takako_hirai\"
Takako Hirai, ISTINTO<\/em>, 2011<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A bit, Takako resembles this figure, as sensitively\u00a0as she moves in her own studio. Again and again, she takes a piece of marble from the table next to her, twists and turns and examines it. Outside, in the green overgrown garden, the afternoon sun of a beautiful March day glows and bathes\u00a0her workplace in a warm light.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes I spend hours looking at the material, searching\u00a0for something, and then I put it back again,” she says as she shows me her work. “I am incredibly slow, but I just need the time to bring together the right pieces.”<\/p>\n

How come\u00a0she has had the idea to learn making\u00a0mosaics?<\/p>\n

“From a study trip to Italy in 1997, during my university studies, two mosaics remained in my mind that I had seen in churches in Rome. During the whole trip I didn’t buy a single art catalog, but three postcards with details of these\u00a0works. They were very similar to the Byzantine mosaics\u00a0in Ravenna, with beautiful nature scenes in strong colors.” After completing her painting studies in Japan, her eyes are attracted\u00a0by\u00a0these postcards again and again. “The more I looked at the photographs, the more the desire grew in me to learn the craft with which these mosaics were created.”<\/p>\n

With the aim of learning how to make\u00a0mosaics in Italy,\u00a0she starts listening\u00a0to Italian language courses on\u00a0Japanese radio stations and studies on her own. For three years, during an artist residence near Hiroshima, she prepares as best as she can to bring\u00a0forward her\u00a0mosaic project.<\/p>\n

“Finding informations about mosaic in Japanese online at that time was hardly possible, and my knowledge of Italian was not sufficient to find information about courses in Italy. What I understood though was, that Ravenna was a city with an incredibly rich cultural heritage and the right place for my mosaic education.”<\/p>\n

So she buys her ticket, without a concrete plan and with the Italian that she\u00a0had learned by herself. Arrived in Ravenna,\u00a0during\u00a0a language course she\u00a0meets a German who presents her to\u00a0Arianna Gallo, who at that time works as a mosaic\u00a0teacher at CISIM<\/em>\u00a0in Ravenna.<\/p>\n

“We liked each other\u00a0immediately and she\u00a0offered\u00a0me to teach me the basics of mosaic\u00a0craft during my two weeks in\u00a0Ravenna on a private basis.” So in\u00a0two intense weeks, Takako makes\u00a0the first moves with the martellina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Back in her hometown, after\u00a0another year of saving money, Takako is motivated to work on\u00a0her mosaic skills again. So she travels back to Ravenna, where Arianna has been\u00a0working on a\u00a01:1 copy of the Alexander Mosaic<\/em>\u00a0together with a team of mosaicists\u00a0from various studios. Hirai\u00a0is at the right spot at the right time: she gets asked if she can help out as an intern.<\/p>\n

“That was great luck for me and such an exciting project!” First, she only prepares\u00a0the microscopic material that is needed for the enormous work, later she\u00a0may also participate a little in laying the background. “After a few weeks I was\u00a0even allowed to work on\u00a0small details like a lance”, she laughs.<\/p>\n

In this way, Takako learns making mosaic on the job, and Arianna and her\u00a0become friends more and more. After a few months, Hirais visa runs out, though, so she goes\u00a0back to Japan. A few weeks later she comes back \u2013\u00a0and as luck would have it, Arianna and Luca open their own studio in Via Maggiore<\/em> exactly at that time. Takako is invited to work with them.<\/p>\n

During her free time in the studio, she begins to make\u00a0her own mosaics. “It had never been my goal to express myself through mosaic. I wanted to learn the craft in the first place, because I thought it could help me find new ways of painting.”<\/p>\n

Only by the time, the more she spends on experimenting, the more Takako begins to love the materials and colors and gets captivated.<\/p>\n

The first results from this period are nature scenes such as\u00a0ISTINTO<\/em>, later she uses\u00a0particularities of the material itself as a topic: Like in\u00a0Vene,<\/em>\u00a0the work she won the prize G.A.E.M. \u2013 Giovani Artisti e Mosaico<\/a> with in 2013. Here, the bare\u00a0veins of matt white marble Biancone<\/em> transform into a vibrant mass that seems as\u00a0naturally emerged as the rock from which it was obtained. A\u00a0powdery, moldy looking surface that has been\u00a0made with so much caution\u00a0that I\u00a0would never dare to touch\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

You\u00a0can see in Hirai’s works the joy of constant search for that little detail hidden\u00a0in a chunk of marble. Her\u00a0ability to integrate these peculiarities of\u00a0nature to a new aesthetic composition is extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Every piece she puts, it seems, is put\u00a0to its\u00a0spot for a reason, and the light that falls on it, the distance\u00a0that separates it from its neighbors, are deliberately chosen. This is also reflected in one of her recent work, Sognatore<\/em>, entirely\u00a0made of\u00a0rectangular tesserae<\/em>\u00a0of mirror glass. The light that reverberates from each and every\u00a0individual piece, the volume that the squares\u00a0create through their inclination\u00a0and joint \u2013 it makes this face plunged\u00a0in its puffy\u00a0dream world a poetic work.<\/p>\n

\"Takako
Takako Hirai, Sognatore<\/em>, 2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So again\u00a0a person is hidden in Hirai’s mosaic, just indicated by a little joint, wise andamenti<\/em>\u00a0and skillful inclination of the glass stones.<\/p>\n

Why does\u00a0this game of seeing and not being seen appeal so much to her? “Maybe because I tend to hide my own feelings”, she says.<\/p>\n

Maybe, because she wants to safe them for her delicate works, is the thought that is going through my mind.<\/p>\n

\"takako_hirai_sognatore_2014_detail\"
Takako Hirai, Sognatore<\/em> (detail), 2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Takako’s story is as unique as her\u00a0works: After studying painting in Hiroshima, she looks for new inspiration, something to\u00a0enrich her way of\u00a0working with color….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[1230],"class_list":["post-9984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-ravenna-en","post_format-post-format-gallery","post-item","post-even"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mused-mosaik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}