Paul Cosgrove

1999 Kamiyama Artist in Residence Participant
In Kamiyama from October 5 to November 17 1999

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1961. He graduated from the Glasgow (Graduate) School of Art (GSA). In 1993 he began to work as an instructor in etching at GSA, and in 1997 he became an instructor in carving there. From the next year he began to serve as a representative of the chief instructor. During this period he was invited to Toledo School of Art in Ohio and Georgia State University in America. For the Atlanta Art Festival he created "Pigeon Tower" which was a highly publicly acclaimed public art work where pigeons carry messages to instead of e-mails or electric waves as the form of communication. This work was highly regarded. He has been creating works, using a computer, which theme is coexistence between nature and culture. By observation of landmarks, shrines, temples, monuments, and so on, his individualistic works present the unification of those architectures and nature.

This artist's approach to find ideas for his work is to look at the surrounding nature and buildings of a place. This time as his inspiration he chose "the Night Light of Higan Temple" as a representative of local architecture in Kamiyama, and as a representative of nature, "Amagoi Falls" which is very famous as one of the best 100 waterfalls in Japan. THe artist attempts to fuse the temple with clear light and the beautiful waterfall. This is his first attempt with this new challenge to have communication between culture and nature in Japan by melding Eastern and Western culture.