An outsider artist is here in Akan, Hokkaido. Shigechan made his private paradise on the east side of the northern country in 2010. He created unique characters like a gourd man, floating frog heads, peanut men and so on. His name is Shigenari Onishi who was born and raised in Tsubetu, Hokkaido and studied at the School of Visual Arts New York in 1971. After graduation, he started working in Tokyo as an illustrator to create album covers for people like Herbie Hancock and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Gradually, his main work changed to three-dimension from flat things, and eventually, he couldn’t keep his artistic objects in his Tokyo base. As a result, he decided to build his own art museum in Hokkaido.
I’d known about his work from the guidebook of Shigechan Land, but I’d never been there because it was very far from Yokohama. However, I moved to Asahikawa, Hokkaido in 2012, and it was easier to access from there. So, I visited the museum in the autumn of 2013. This land has fourteen theme houses that are named after human body parts, like a nose house, a nail house and so on. He is good at producing artistic characters from driftwood, and we can enjoy his unique works in every theme house. Of course, we can buy them though they’re anything but cheap. I recommend you to see “Wasted Mr. Chidoria” made out of the root of a tree. This is a very amusing piece of work, and its name is also charming because “Chidori-Ashi” means staggering gait in Japanese. Here is the photo on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/7p2t-kMxJp/?hl=ja
Does it look like a man wearing a sombrero and holding sake bottles? Other theme houses are constantly being installed. Shigechan is waiting for you.
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