“Eye’s Got It!” is an annual visual art competition created by Jamie Salvador Castillo that brings together a professional panel of judges and artists from all over Central Texas. Artist’s submissions are whittled down through three rounds of increasingly tougher critique and discussions. The grand prize is a solo show at grayDUCK gallery. We are excited to present this year’s winner, San Antonio artist Hiromi Tsuji Stringer who won over the judges with her series of mixed media drawings, which distill communication and emotions into a visual narrative that reveals hidden truths about human behavior.

Hiromi Tsuji Stringer

"Do you miss Japan?" Several years ago, somebody asked me that when I was feeling homesick. I replied with confusion, "Oh, no. Of course I am not." At that time, the word "miss" to me was simply for "Miss" Universe or "Miss" Japan. Noticing the surprised expression on his face, I digested the awkward silence.

Even though language is one of the strongest communication tools available, it is also an abstraction. In an attempt to reach a mutual understanding, even parties that are native speakers of the same language may have a communication gap because of this characteristic. I believe there are various degrees of miscommunication creating a niche for the birth of the absurd, the humorous and the surreal. I call this phenomenon the “possibility of language.”

It is no wonder that I, as a non-native English speaker, encounter more than the usual amount of miscommunication. I started to wonder how I could deal with those kinds of socio-linguistic gaps in fine art. One of the impressions I got through the study of contemporary art works was that knowing (or reading) its context and verbalized concept is the key to see and “get” the works in addition to enjoying its visual aspects. So I started to embed bookpages on the picture plane as literal context. Some of the text is hard to read because of the layered gesso over the bookpage as a part of my attempt to recreate the occurrence of the “possibility of language.”