Naoshima

This is a part of a personal project titled GlobalType. I travel full time and love to photograph the places I'm in. Each place I visit I choose my favorite photo series and hand letter the name of the city, neighborhood, area, etc that inspires me most.

Naoshima is one of the coolest places I've ever been. Much cooler than I had ever anticipated. It is a Japanese island completely dedicated to art, modern art in particular. The Chichu Art Museum is a gallery I think every artist should visit. It was such a unique and personal experience that was just... freaking awesome. And at the risk of sounding douchey, it's a visit that does give you a chance to unplug and connect with the island and the gallery spaces. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people take pictures of every single artwork in a museum and then never look at them again. I've always taken the stance that if given the opportunity appreciate the artwork in person and download the photo from Google images later. It'll be a much better photo than what you can take on your Droid Karen, I promise.

So many, if not all of the galleries eliminate the use of phones in their space. Which at first is scary because you're experiencing so many cool things and you want EVERYONE on Instagram to know. But you quickly come to terms with it and surprisingly you live. You find that you're content in the fact that you experienced something for yourself and it feels pretty good.

Now at the risk of sounding like a complete hypocrite, this is a photo I took of Yayoi Kusama's Great Pumpkin. It's the landmark site on the island that everyone who chooses to, gets a photo with. And any chance to see a Yayoi Kusama installation without waiting in a 7 hour line quite frankly is worth taking a picture with.

Her whole deal is repeating dot patterns in her work which is what I let inspire me for this wordmark. So all the characters are based on dots or in the case of the 'o' are just a dot themselves. I really love how it turned out. It was one of those illustrations that just happened and wasn't carefully plotted before hand. It just popped into my head and worked so well with the roundness of the 'Naoshima' characters. Marks like these are the ones that happen after 7 failed projects and after so much self deprecation you get turn to yourself and say "hey I actually think I'm getting better at this."