Washi | Blay Studio

Design and Direction: JM Blay
Creative Direction / Art Direction / 3D / Editing / VFX: JM Blay
Production: Blay Studio

On the occasion of the Imadate Art Fair in the prefecture of Echizen in Japan, JM Blay was invited to create an audiovisual piece for an art exhibition for the Echizen Museum. The exhibition was about Japanese handmade paper as always, but this year was the first time they were inviting artists from different artistic disciplines to show their view of Washi using their own visual narratives.


The piece JM created, is a free interpretation of the ancient hand made process that is Washi. He approached this as an experimental project, finding a narrative in the journey that is the process of paper making. JM abridged the steps he thought were more interesting to show, focusing on the natural materials and the paper rather than the human action. 
The way of making this paper is like a ceremony, almost spiritual, and more related to the gods than humans. This vision led him to create an oneiric piece about the making of Washi. 



Flying branches interacting with each other, a drop of water starting the process, boiling strips of bark, an emerging sheet of paper from the water... This is the narrative JM used in this piece. Almost like small interlocked stories about the materials that give them the importance they have.