Putting Penang on world map again

By NOOR HAYATI

WOOD artist Katsumi Mukai has once again made it possible for Penang to be featured on Japan’s number one television station – Fuji TV Channel 8.

Two years ago, his participation among 50 Asian artists in Penang Sculpture Trail Project made it to the station’s prime time news broadcast on New Year’s Eve, said Kuala Lumpur-based Fuji TV correspondent Shura Natalia Mohd Tajudin.

The three-minute news clip then showed the progress of Mukai’s two-month work on a giant wood sculpture called “The winds of Penang” and a map of Penang to enlighten viewers on the whereabouts of this unique project.

Shura shared a copy of the news clip with Mukai and The Star recently when she was in Penang covering Mukai’s second project called “Brilliant Forest” for Fuji TV.

My forest:Huge and small sculptures - they dominate artist Katsumi Mukai's Brilliant Forest project in Penang.

Slow and steady:Mukai teaching Shura the way to make an egg sculpture stand.

Mukai spent four months at a newly set-up artist retreat at the mid-hill of Bukit Penara in Balik Pulau for the second project.

He was in the first batch of four artists privileged to be in the ABN AMRO – Malihom Artist-in-Resident (AiR) Programme under Wawasan Open University, Penang.

At the retreat, in the middle of a fruit farm and surrounded by the abundant greenery, hills and valleys of the island’s south-west, Mukai created 23 huge wood sculptures and some 40 smaller pieces.

The farm workers helped him in his project, he said, adding that he now considered himself a Penangite after having stayed on the island on four occasions since 2005.

Mukai welcomes public participation in his art work.

“People will appreciate it better when they not only get to see the sculpture but also shape, chisel and hammer pieces out of it.

“My dream now is to sculpt 100 of the big pieces and install them like a forest playground where children can run, climb, hide, play and have fun among them,” he said,

Mukai left Penang recently. He has projects lined up in Armenia in September.

In November, he will be back in Fukushima, Japan, for a collaborative work with a German stone artist.

The Bukit Penara retreat is hos- ting a second batch of resident artists until Dec 31.

They include Indonesian sculptor/painter Teguh Ostenric and Chan Kok Hooi, a painter from Kuala Lumpur. Details are available at www.malihom-air.org

SOURCE: The Star Online (North)