Full with beautiful, aesthetic artworks display at 23th Izu Kougen Art Festival! A must-go event for art lovers. There are 96 places showing various type of artworks such as painting, craft, wood art, ceramics, etc.

There are so many option available but I can only go to some of them. The festival is already over now. But you can always come next year (or also in October, they will held another art festival) to see more artworks! I went at weekdays so there were not much people, guess this festival gets crowded when Golden Week (3-5 May) and weekends though.

Artworks Collection

Crayon Art

The first place I went to is Jogasaki Culture Museum. The displays over here are crayon paintings mainly by Terao Ichiro and a guest artist Saegusa Ayako. The challenge is to produce an art only using 20 colors from the crayon pack. There is also step by step tutorial to make a crayon paintings. They even provide papers and crayons if you want to try!

Keisuke Iwahata

Next place was Rose Terrace. As you can see in the picture, the building design is so unique. I like it. Looks like a mushroom house! This place is actually cafe and souvenir shop. But for this event they are displaying Keisuke Iwahata paintings on the second floor.

As for Keisuke Iwahata‘s artwork, I am not an art expert, but I would say his art is a mix of surreal and playful style, creative paintings with vivid color. My favorites are his colorful earth painting and a radish with feet painting (it reminds me of my friend, hahaha). You can click here to see more of his artwork. 

Other Places

There are 2 places where I can’t take pictures, I am sorry I can only put the buildings picture. The first one is Glass Pocket (Garasu Poketto) showing glass art. For example, like the bird decoration above the place name.  Second place is Nobel Savage, a shop selling objects and souvenirs. Mostly from South East Asia such as Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc.

I stopped by at Nagaya supermarket. There are children (around age 4 to 10) drawings display over there.

Ootsubo Nako

Last part is  my personal favorite! I went to Seijo Gallery and on the second floor, a fantasy world from Ootsubo Nako awaits.

Most of her works are related to animals. The Eto or Chinese Zodiacs series or Belladonnalily painting series. The Belladonnalily series showing a girl playing with her rabbit-masked friends. There are 4 big paintings showing the 12 animals of Chinese zodiacs in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. There are also 12 separate pieces of each of the zodiac animals and a rabbit. The rabbit appear on many of her works and she also made postcards with rabbit drawing (maybe the rabbit is a representation of her?).

I was also amazed by the cardboard object, because it was VERY detailed and I could imagine how much time and effort he put in his works. The houses are same with the houses she painted in the Chinese zodiac seasonal painting. She also made cute animals with colorful ornaments.

Izu Kougen Station 

Before going back, I went around Izu Kogen station. This station is quiet, but pretty. The moment you get off the train and walk in the station, there are many little cute things displayed along the station corridor. For example, the cute Totoro plushie! There are also small shopping centre and dashi display. In front of the station there is a 150 years old camphorwood (Cinnamomum camphora) and also foot bath! After long walk sight-seeing the art festival, I relaxed my feet over here ♬

Thank you for reading this article. Hope you can come for the next Izu Kougen Art Festival too!

-Vivi-

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