"Return' by NORIKO SAITO - with works on washi by N QUINTANO, L PRITCHARD, J MARTINEZ and G SMITH

As part of its participation in the first World Washi Summit that took place in 2008, Craig Scott Gallery presented a group exhibition of works on washi (Japanese handmade paper). In the north gallery was a full-room installation by Noriko Saito, consisting of a fleet of washi dories arranged in an ambiguous relationship to each other. Viewer were struck by a feeling that the boats simultaneously converge towards each other and move away from each other. The indeterminate experience of both coming and going was overlain by the title of the work, "Return" (or kaeri in Japanese): were these vessels returning to an originating point from which they had all previously departed, or were they returning homeward from a destination they had all previously reached? Created by an artist whose own life is divided, and involves frequent travel, between Japan, Canada and Germany, the "Return (Kaeri) installation was also a commentary on cultural exchange and the shaping of personal identity in a cosmopolitan world. Picking on up these latter themes as well as on the sense of individuality within a collective oneness evoked by the work, many of the vessels came 'laden' with a (Japanese) lotus seed and visitors to the exhibition were then invited to select a (Canadian) maple key to place it in that vessel that has most immediately struck them as 'their' boat.

Complementing the Saito "Return" installation in the North Gallery were works on washi by four other gallery artists.

Jorge Martinez Garcia created a new etching within his bonsai series -- the wonderful neo-baroque "Dragon Bonsai" -- in an edition of 44 prints.

Nicolas Quintano contributed two works, "The Cycle No 1" (four-panel drawing on washi paper) and "The Cycle No 2" (three-panel drawing on washi paper). The drawings constituted a 'manual' on the origami steps needed to create a paper figure of a crane; his work tied into a body of previous work celebrating the story of the message of peace sent by a survivor of the nuclear bombings of Japan, Sadoko, who sought to make 1000 origami cranes as an offering to the world before her death.

On display as well were several new works on paper, mixed-media drawings and acrylic painting, by Lorraine Pritchard, perhaps Canada's most prolific employer of washi paper in her art.

Two colour-ink drawings on washi by Gord Smith topped off the exhibition.

The 2008 World Washi Summit ran from June 7 to 15, while the Craig Scott Gallery exhibition ran until June 22.