How this exhibit came to be (by Dushka Zapata)

Dan and I met at the beginning of the pandemic. We were co-workers, then friends. We spoke for hours over conference calls, mostly about work, then about each other. 

I fell in love on those conference calls. We lived in the same city but did not meet in person for months.

On one call Dan learned that I write every day, and asked if he could illustrate my writing with quick drawings. We began a morning ritual: I write and Dan makes a drawing that takes him less than five minutes. 

This small act of communion, repeated daily, has resulted in four books.

In one of those early conversations, through the computer’s blue light, Dan asked “if you could spend a few weeks anywhere in the world, where would it be?”

Japan, I said. 

Me too! 

A few months later, sitting together in my kitchen sipping coffee, I showed Dan an Instagram account. “This guy draws like you,” I said. “It’s not that your drawings are similar - it’s that the spirit is similar, their whimsy.”

“Oh” Dan says to me. “The artist’s name is Luis Mendo. He is Spanish, but he lives in Japan with his wife Yuka.”

A moment later, “they host an artist residency in Japan! They have a form you can fill out.”

“Fill it out” I say. “Fill it out! Let’s go to Japan.”

When I said this, to me it was the longest of shots, an implausible act of defiance against a virus that had us on lockdown. It was akin to saying “let’s sprout wings so we can fly”.

And here we are.

Dan is an artist. He paints and draws and in a world where so many talented artists struggle to make ends meet he has turned his work into a business: he takes anything complicated and makes it simple by drawing it. 

But there is something else. Dan has a passion, an obsession that unfurled inside him when he was a boy. Aviation, and creating worlds for his model airplanes. 

We need to make space to do what we loved to do as children. 

We leave it behind, then wonder why we feel devoid of purpose.

We’ve come to Japan to do what we loved doing when we were kids. I write. I wander this incredible city and fill my heart with wonder - a sense of wonder that wilts under the pressures of a daily grind.

Dan makes models and with them brings stories to life. He creates 3d surfaces from flat sheets so he can cut, fold and roll like engineers did 100 years ago. 

We love stories of people who dream of implausible things and make these dreams tangible through what they create - with metal sheets, with pictures, with words.

Dreams made tangible come true.