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Coffee Tables
January 2005:
The 28th of January. A day of a studio tour. The advisors (who are artists themselves) took the lead, and we visited each resident’s studio having discussions about their works. It took a whole day. Today, the tour was led by Avis Newman and Paul Perry.
This is what happened at Susanne’s (a German artist, the second year resident) studio.
She’s been working on a project called ‘The Camouflage Museum’ for a few years. For more details: www.thecamouflagemuseum.org

What she is working on now is to put some photo images onto furniture-like objects. She said that she is interested in ‘how quickly the cityscape changes,’ and her central motif is ‘the 1950s-style furniture.’

Our discussion was on this low table (sorry... this is not a very good image). She said ‘I’m in the process of making a chess board.’ But there is no chessman yet. I asked ‘Are you planning to make any chessmen for your board?’ Her answer was ‘The idea of chess is somewhat too big for me... so no plans for chessman yet.’ André (a Dutch artist who loves Kyushu-ramen, the first year resident) said ‘this does not look like a chess board to me.’ Then Amalia (an Argentine artist, the second year resident) said ‘This is a coffee table. Why not have coffee, instead of playing chess?’
Ah! A chess board becomes a coffee table... this idea fits well with Susanne’s idea of making furniture. Sure, what a bright idea! And this is a positive shift, too. (The image was taken a few days later in Susanne’s studio when this piece was actually used as a coffee table.)

Hello
Hi, I’m Tomoko Kawachi. Since January 2005, I am staying in Amsterdam as a resident artist at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (Rijks).
What is artist-in-residence? Artist-in-residence is an institution or a programme which provides artists a place to stay and an opportunity to develop their production and presentation. There are such residency programmes all over the world, and each programme has its own characteristics, administrations and conditions, such as the work period and budget. (In case of Rijksakademie, artists can stay up to two years.)
Rijksakademie is inviting artists who pursue different art disciplines and techniques from many different countries. There are also advisors at Rijksakademie, some of whom are artists themselves, and others art critics or curators.
Before joining Rijksakademie, I was involved as a support staff in the organization called Art Trace, and that is how I came to keep a diary about my life in the Netherlands on their web page.
If you are interested in a residency programme or in staying in the Netherlands, or, if you want to know more about Tomoko Kawachi, thirty-one years of age, please visit my website for further updates.
For more information about Rijksakademie, please visit:
http://www.rijksakademie.nl/uk_index.htm
