I have tripped to Taiwan-Yokohama-Tokyo-Gujo between the middle and end of August. It rained a lot during this summer, and we did not have much sunlight so that vegetables did not grow well. Now it feels that it is a real summer at last.

Vegetables planted on the roof started to grow well. Eggplants, shishito (small green peppers) and mini tomato bore its fruits and we could gather and eat them everyday. It was fun to do the farming.

1) MERRY IN TAIPEI
We had "2009 Taiwan International Design Competition", a design contest and seminar in Taipei Design Center. In these recent years Taiwan is trying to improve its skill in designing. Taiwan holds many international design competition to arise enthusiasm for design and improve designing skills of its students. Taiwan is trying to become a great country in the field of design.
In most cases, large amount of money is set as a prize and many Taiwanese students show interest in design. Every time I join the competition as a juror, I think that students are improving their designing skill.
The first prize of Competition this time is titled "more contact" from Taiwan. It shows a graphical visual by connecting a heart with many words. It tells us that we have to have more contact with others, so that every one is connected to each other.
The second prize is won by a work from Dutch. It picks green earth as a theme and shows a picture of green grasses grow on the footsteps left on a cemented road. It was an impressive work.
The third prize was a work from Taiwan titled "Green Dream". It is a series of 3 colour-graphic posters appealing the concept of eco-friendly. Many of other works also have the theme of "Environment and Peace". It is a social design that leave a MERRY feeling.

The works I saw in this competition were very good. They show a high design level. Many of them have a higher level than design works in Japan. The next day of the competition I gave an one hour lecture about my works, from the graphic design works in my early years until my works in MERRY Project. Everybody listened to my lecture eagerly. They even asked my sign and asked me to shake hand and take pictures with them. They treated me like a star.

On the the third day I went to MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Taipei) and I saw two bigs rice fields in front of the entrance of the museum. It was an art work of Mr. Lin Chuan Chu titled 晴耕雨読 . The concept he had in mind was to plant seeds to revive "dead land" in the cities. This projects will revive the lands and that will make people healthier.
Based on this concept, they held an event to plant seeds with children. This memories of planting seeds will leave in these children's memories and the are expected to grow to be an adult who cares about environment.
MERRY PROJECT cherish the same concept of this work and we are impressed of this kind of events. I think that everybody should think about this concept.


MERRY IN TAIWAN　2009.08.14〜18

			THANK YOU !

As usual I took the photograph of the smiling faces people who joined the competition after the competition and seminar.
There will be an exhibition of MERRY during October in a building called 福興穀倉. We chose "The Symbiosis of Mankind" as a theme and we are going to make sections of children and adults with communication as our concept. We also decided to go for a photo shooting of disaster areas recently stroke by Typhoon.
We are looking forward to the coming MERRY IN TAIWAN.

Now wait till the next MERRY COLUMN!

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