Exhibition – Backyard Fruit
Portraits of homegrown fruit – series of digital paintings. Gallery Show at Hotel Healdsburg Carriage House, April - May 2005. Gallery Show at Kami no Megumi, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan – October 2010
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The original Backyard Fruit still-life images were taken with a Polaroid 680 camera. The Polaroids were scanned into digital files, where in Photoshop the image was deconstructed and layered to control the color and tonal quality. This method was inspired by traditional printing processes such as wood block printing, where each color of a print is made from a single block and layered to create a full tonal image. In this digital version of an antique process, Backyard Fruit is printed with archival quality pigments, on acid free art paper or washi – Read below the story of how this series came into fruition...
Walnut Creek, CA
MY RENEWED INTEREST with backyard fruit began in 1993. That year I returned to my childhood home after living in Tokyo for nearly six years. I’d been homesick for simple grounded qualities, such as the pleasure of hanging out in the backyard amongst the fruit trees I had grown up with.
One day in late autumn, there was a box of ripe fuyu kaki in the corner of my parents’ kitchen, picked from the backyard – some with a leaf or branch still attached. The fruit exuded home-grown charm with their uneven texture and tree-ripened sweetness, which inspired me to photograph the kaki in still-life with my Polaroid 680 camera. It was also during this time my mother began her two year struggle with cancer. The image of pears was captured shortly before mom’s death in October 1995; Fuji apples and figs proceeded in the years thereafter.
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Healdsburg, California – April 2005
Hotel Healdsburg Carriage House, April 2005
Healdsburg, California – April 2005
SPECIAL THANKS
Hotel Healdsburg
Circe Sher
Dry Creek Kitchen
Charlie Palmer
Nana Mae Organics
Urban Tree Farm Nursery
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Ron Chan
Margie Chu
Joan Czaia
Naomi Fukumori
Tom Horton
Lucy Junus
Janice Kato
Bo Lee
Sarah Keith Mabry
Clare Metague
Mimi Mindel
Frederika Moller
Carl Sereda
Hock Wah Yeo
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Nao Sakamoto
Paper Nao
Megumi Ogawa
Kami no Megumi
Noriko Nabeka
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Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan – October 2010
The assemblage is a pictorial almanac of my parent's kaki tree, over the course of a full year.
Backyard orange tree, Walnut Creek, CA. Gicée printed on washi, assemblage.
Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan – October 2010
THROUGH CHANCE and DESIGN Pears became the icon for the restaurant – Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg, California. The series then evolved with the sumptuous fruits from my aunt Helen & uncle Ken’s yard, and from friends who share their seasonal bounty as desserts or garnishes.
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In February 2005 during the completion of the Backyard Fruit series and show in Healdsburg, my father’s heart succumbed after months of failing health. What began in the autumn of 1993 had essentially been a personal almanac, a means of reconciling and revering life’s cycles. It’s through the camera’s lens and photo illustrating that is my vehicle to articulate a vitality and essence of being.
Backyard Fruit is dedicated to my parents Taro and Nancy Fukumori. It is an expression of the color and flavors of home-sweet-home, nature and human nature, and as symbols of my foundation and blossoming spirit.
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