Freyja No Heya

It’s been a privilege and a joy hosting Freyja no Heya at Courtyard Hiroo. It is with a heavy heart that I have decided to close at the end of this month as I will miss so many of the amazing people and families I have met there. However, it is time for me to focus on my work and take on more with the other Deans and co. as we build our own projects and institutions! We are in the process of renovating my new studio a little closer to home and I hope all of you who I have got to know will come and visit! More info to come on that! For now I just want to say a thank you to my students particularly who have deeply enriched my life and my artwork over the years, I will miss you enormously!

Thank you from Freyja,
When I was very little, I went to a magical kindergarten. I can still remember the sights sounds and feel of the silk play fabrics, the wooden animal toys, the beautiful scenes and colours painted on our walls that told me this space was calm, for me and full of stories and I remember the wonder of the watercolour paint spreading and blending on wet paper. In fact, my strongest memories were of creating and the sense of achievement in being able to manifest my own universe in front of me. I wanted to facilitate these widening horizons and magic moments for my students in Freyja no Heya but I didn’t anticipate that the memories I would create would be magical for me, and that my world would become so much wider and deeper too.

I have been honoured and overjoyed to teach and create with every single one of my students, who have in turn taught me so much about creativity, joy and the importance of encouraging every individual’s own way of expressing themselves. Every child has been a creative genius building their own internal world as they create and I am so happy to have been involved in this in whatever way I was.

For me, it is time that I fully pursue my own artwork. I will be bringing with me everything I have learnt in my time at Freyja no Heya as I continue and work more within my family’s ventures in art, architecture and education and perhaps one day we will be able to come together again in a new and different way. This has not been an easy decision and I will miss you all more than you can know, so I if you can, please keep in touch and send me updates and artwork photos! I hope the memories will stay with all my students as they will with me and thank you all for making Freyja no Heya the space in time that it became, it was a pure joy.
Lots of love and thanks from,
Freyja


私が幼い頃に通っていた幼稚園は魔法のような場所でした。シルクの布や木製の動物のおもちゃ、壁に描かれた美しい風景や色彩は、その空間が穏やかで、私のためのものであり、物語に満ちていることを教えてくれました。水彩絵の具が濡れた紙の上で広がり、混ざり合う不思議な感覚を今でも鮮明に覚えています。最も強く残っている思い出は、自分の想像する世界を目の前に現すことができたという達成感でした。私はフレイヤの部屋の生徒たちに、このような視野の広がりと魔法のような時間を提供したいと思っていましたが、皆さんと作る思い出が私にとって魔法となり、私自身の世界もこれほどまでに広く深くなるとは予想だにしていませんでした。

生徒たち全員が私に、創造性、喜び、そして一人ひとりに自分自身を表現する方法を奨励することの重要性について、多くのことを教えてくれました。どの子も創造の天才であり、創造しながら自分の内なる世界を構築しています。

私自身は、いよいよ自分の作品を本格的に追求する時期に来たと感じております。フレイヤの部屋で私が学んだことのすべてを心に留め、家族のプロジェクトでもある美術、建築、教育などの仕事を続けながら、いつかまた新しい別の形でご一緒できれば幸いです。この決断は簡単なものではありませんでしたし、皆さんが想像する以上に寂しいものです。ですから、もし可能であれば、連絡を取り続け、みなさんの近況や作品の写真を送ってください。 そして最後に、フレイヤの部屋を特別な時間と場所にしてくれた皆さんに心よりお礼を申し上げます。

たくさんの愛と感謝をこめて。

Foraging for Daruma San’s lunch

This weekend I hosted an Easter Workshop and egg hunt on Saturday and had to share some of the pictures. Easter is in several ways my favorite time of year. Sunny weather, daffodils and crocuses, the lambs are out and of course long, enormous family lunches at our homes or in country pubs and lots and lots of chocolate. Although as I discovered during Covid, just getting out and smelling the grass as the season changes can keep me going. Having said that, I was thrilled to share my enjoyment with everyone on a transcendently beautiful day on Saturday. I hope you all had a good bank holiday weekend smelling the grass and or running around with kids, catching those little glints of brightly coloured metallic wrapping in the undergrowth! 🐣🌸🍫🌈🌷🌳🍬🍭

Very excited to be involved with Geek for their NFT Junction exhibition alongside some incredible artists including my good friend come and join us if you’re around Tokyo for the 26th and 27th of March. Each artist is selling three NFTs and I’ll be selling my Life Cycle triptych, which I’ll remind everyone of in my next post! There will also be T-shirts and I want all of them 😆👚🖼🎨🤖 sign up free to join for exhibition, live events and or lectures at by following this link https://mosaicnationart.blogspot.com/2022/03/shibuya-nft-art-junction-2022.html?m=1

Had great fun yesterday making big art with my little buddies. A lot of education is being seated under a table with a span of movement only as wide as your arms or the desk. The paper and implements presented in front of you with nowhere to go. I think it’s really important to sometimes have a feeling of physical ownership and control of your work by literally getting on top of it and moving over it. It’s like conducting colour in space rather than being conducted by the space. The bigger the better too I think! I get a lot of students who when they first come to lessons do tiny drawings in the corner of a piece of paper, I can feel their hesitancy and there are ways around this, a lot of it is just getting familiar with me and the setting but a brilliant way to break through this is to spread out a huge sheet, pour out a load of materials and say ‘go!’. I think you can’t draw small on giant paper, partly because if you make a mistake theres no sense of waste and I think you can’t draw small when you’re excited to make such a material difference to your environment.

🐅 🐅 🔥 🌳 🌙 🤚 👁 🖼 😧 🙌 can you guess the poem from the first stanza in my ‘emoetry’? I can feel a book deal coming! 😂 we’ll soon be starting the year of the tiger and I can feel some changes in the air, more movement, vibrancy and excitement! In the most positive way possible for us all I hope it’s true! This is my current blackboard I felt like chalking in when I brought some pieces of a display I made years ago into the studio. I couldn’t bear to throw them away even though they’re broken and wobbly so I thought I’d let the kids try making some things. I propped the against the board and there was something very theatrical in a jungly way about them so thought for now, I’ll let the frame the ‘fearful symmetry’ of this tiger!

Hello everyone! Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve posted what’s been happening in Freyja no Heya, this year has been full of exhibition work and commissions but also plenty of wonderful creations by my students so I’m going to try and catch up with pictures of those creations from this year!
For now, here are some pictures from our Halloween workshop where we created trick or treating baskets, had yoga and story time with Geneva Hargreaves, played pass the black cat, trick or treat cups and finally a big trick or treat hunt for lovely and horrible things hidden around courtyard! We had two wonderful groups and I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who came and made it great fun for all of us at Courtyard too! 🎃🌈🧙‍♀️🦄🪄🧚‍♀️🍭🍬🍫👻🏴‍☠️

Prep done for our Easter workshop tomorrow!

As part of Easter celebrations we’ve been making paper flower wreaths to decorate our spaces. This is one of my online student’s wreaths and I thought it was absolutely incredible!!

Today everyone made the most gorgeous parachutes and adorable characters to attach them to! They drifted like sakura blossoms out of our 3rd floor window!