Recollection and Dawn

         Today I want to share some amazing surreal wood engravings by Kayoko Moriyama (Japan, b. 1966).  Unfortunately there are two factors that are preventing me from really finding out as much as I’d like about these pieces.  Firstly, I don’t have very big images of most of these, and I’d really love to blow them up and look at every tiny detail more closely.  Still, I can at least see that there are all sorts of interesting things going on!  And secondly, a lot of the information about these pieces is in Japanese which I cannot read, so I’m working with some Google translate (which may or may not be accurate), and piecing together information from various sites.

        In any case, I first came across this piece “Dawn” on The Society of Wood Engravers web site.  Wood engravings are often irregular shapes because they are done on end grain, which is frequently simply rounds of trees.  This piece, at 22x17 cm, is quite large for a wood engraving, and there is a lot of detail crammed into that space.  What’s going on?  A whale carries a magical castle on its back, sprouting turrets and trees exuberantly.  The whole thing seems to be in the sky, with clouds in the background, and yet a swoosh as of

underwater bubbles wreaths it.  A girl runs after a dog up the stairs to the castle doorway.  Like most wood engravings, it’s all fine textures, from the stippling that gives the whale its shading to the different patterns on the castle walls and roofs.

        Another girl is running up another stairway in “Recollection,” a much smaller print, about 9x9 cm.  This time we don’t know where the stairway leads since it disappears behind the ram’s head.  It’s also hard to tell whether the girl is scared or excited, running from something or running to something, but at least the goat has a benevolent expression.  What does this have to do with “Recollection?”  I don’t know, but that’s surrealism for you.

        Another goat appears in “Mr. Jacob and the Airship.”  There are actually three airships in the sky behind this magnificently horned ram, unless perhaps they’re different views of the same one.  I would certainly like to know the story behind this one, although in some ways part of the fun is not knowing.  What sort of story would you make up to explain this as an illustration?

        I have to restrain myself from sharing lots more of these, so I’ll finish with just one more: “Departure.”  This shows a dog being lifted off a moon-like surface, but instead of the bunch of balloons one might expect, the dog is being lifted by an enormous, dense bunch of flowers.  There’s a lot I like about this, from the concept of the bouyancy of flowers to the incredible details of all those petals.  This is another huge one by wood engraving standards: 32x29

cm.  I hope the dog is going somewhere that feels like home - perhaps to find the little girl and join her in the castle on the whale’s back.

[Pictures: Dawn, wood engraving by Kayoko Moriyama (Image from The Society of Wood Engravers);

Recollection, wood engraving by Moriyama;

Mr. Jacob and the Airship, wood engraving by Moriyama, (Images from KayokoMoriyama.com);

Departure, wood engraving by Moriyama, 2025 (Image from College Women’s Association of Japan).]