Strolling through Nara, I step into a gallery and discover fifty wooden sculptures.

It is the opening of the show and two old men are sitting in the room with the sculptures. One of them speaks English. He introduces us to the artist Etsuya Ichikawa. Out comes the Google Translator and Ichikawa explains that he had wanted to create 100 sculptures for this show but the summer was so hot that he couldn’t work for more than a few hours each day, and therefore only finished 50. He says that the sculptures represent the smoke from incense.

Here is a photo from the incense series I took a few years ago.

I look up Etsuya Ichikawa. He was born in Nara in 1940. After graduating high school, Etsuya enrolled in the carving department of Tokyo University of the Arts, where he learned wood, stone, and bronze carving. He took a special interest in wood carving and began working in Kobe, where he produced contemporary works that garnered praise both in Japan and abroad.

The second old man is a painter who met Ichikawa at the university in Tokyo in the late 50s. Friends for sixty years.