About a month ago I got an inquiry from Bluemoon Letterpress – a letterpress studio in Japan. Takuma Nakagawa is organizing and exhibition of letterpress work titled “Letterpress of Pray” where she will show and sell in a few different galleries with 100% of the proceeds benefitting orphans of the tsunami.
I was unsure about what my printed prayer would look like until I went to a vintage stamp shop in New York on my vacation. There I dug through a pile of vintage Japanese postage stamps and found my inspiration. Mine would be a sort of letter, using Japanese stamps for the recipients and United States stamps for the senders (I suppose I was speaking for everyone in the good ole USA… is that weird?)
I found out from some special Japanese fluent helpers that one of the stamps portrayed Fukushima, which isn’t where the tsunami hit, but was badly injured as a result.
I particularly loved the coloration of the two palm tree stamps. I think they really showed the similarities between that area of Japan (not sure!) and California. This was an instant match.
Then in my not very practiced handwriting, I wrote what I wanted for Japan. I chose green ink for growth, and printed away.
I sent off 17 prints today to Japan with hopes that my message will reach far more than 17 people and that the beauty of communication will be translated.