About This Project

The Art Studio

(Excerpts from the memo of Aya Matsuoka)
Use 4.85 in. Japanese cypress lumbers for the art studio and living room. The studio has 14.91 ft. columns, so build a second floor above the living room for a bedroom. The studio will have a 20.88 ft. window on the north, and the wall will be 23.66 ft. Install an 8.95 ft. wide and 47.72 in. deep closet. Interior walls of the closet will be plastered with cement to make it an urushi [drying] room. The interior of the urushi room will have a built-in shelf made with wood blocks, and a cloth will be hang in a bowl filled with water placed under the shelf to keep the humidity of the chamber to be naturally raised.

The urushi room was large enough to accommodate the wall painting for the Hotel Echo Osaka and Taiwa’s three part artworks with sufficient amount of water for urushi to be dried overnight. Because his studio design called for unusual dimensions, we had such a hard time with the contractor. With my husband suffering from illness, I don’t think I’d ever gone through a period of hardships with the magnitude I went through during that construction period in my lifetime.