Issue date: 4/30/07 Section: Arts

"Maybe its my personal identification with those who have been disconnected by society at large that sends me to Hokkaido. I've had my own setbacks and intend this project as a vehicle for reflection and witness to other's transcendence over adversity…"

These are the words of Liz Doles, the artist behind the new exhibition in the Harbor Art Gallery, "Broad Hokkaido: Pinhole Photos and Other Images of Japan."

Traveling to Japan to make art that captures the culture and society of a nearly forgotten place has been a lifelong dream of UMass Boston student Doles. From April 23 to June 5, the Harbor Art Gallery will display her work in a new exhibition. With a homemade pinhole camera fashioned out of a heavily taped laundry detergent box in tow, Doles used scholarship money from the art department top make the trip to Hokkaido. While there, she toured the region and captured what she saw with the rudimentary device. Drawn by a fascination with the culture, Doles set out to take hold of the region visually, to bottle a bit of the wonder that was all around her.

Dole traveled to Tokyo and then to Hokkaido, the northern most island of the Japanese peninsula. While there Doles immersed herself in the traditions of the people, taking in all aspects of Hokkaido society.

The people in the streets, riding trains and buses, going to and from school and work, all of these familiar aspects of modern society are alive and well in Hokkaido. These aspects of the Japanese culture are weaved with glimpses of the past that are found in the region. The work manages to illustrate the strange melding that is modern day Japan, the old and the new intermingle in a hypnotic cultural dance.

Bits of the past, an ancient past steeped in tradition and magic, are found everywhere. Ancient temples, thousands of years old, stand proudly in the shadows of the most modern of the world's societies. Japan is the birthplace to all that we call technology, the land of video games and economical vehicles, but it is also a land seeped in a history that is miles from modern.

Continued...

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