My Beachfront Canvas
The kids grimaced as we pushed open the peeling door and brushed aside the overgrown plants enveloping the small side yard.
Inside, the house was dusty, stale, dark and empty, other than a couple of skittering funamushi sea roaches. But even with the prospect of creatures inside, I was excited. My teenagers less so.
Last summer, after spending a few weekends exploring the beautiful Izu Peninsula, my husband scoured the Internet for beachfront property. While he doesn’t speak Japanese, working for a Japanese company means he has incredible research skills. His search turned up a little house on a tiny road next to a rocky beach.
We drove down to take a look. It was a funky, late-1960s beach home that had never been upgraded. We slid open the five wooden shutters that covered the paned windows. Light flooded in. The one-storied house had its original windows, floors, roof tiles, walls and kitchen, with a low, metal sink and shelves. Traditional fusuma doors and sliding shoji screens separated the small, tatami-matted rooms. The main bedroom even had a tokonoma alcove, complete with hanging scroll.
Driving back to Tokyo that day, my husband talked about how much fun it would be to spend the upcoming summer months demolishing the place. The kids were horrified at the thought of spending a single night there before it was remodeled, while I was dreaming about how to restore its original Japanese charm. New tatami mats and shoji doors. A big, onsen-style bathtub. My imagination ran wild!
We have owned the house for more than a year now and have enjoyed many lovely weekends and holidays there. With no hot water and no screens on the windows, it is basically camping. We still use our nabe-style cooking stove to make coffee. And the remodeling project has taken a bit of a turn. We have been hesitant to start the demolition, but that hesitation has led to something new.
This spring, as I practiced my art and created more paintings, I became cramped for space in Tokyo. That’s when I realized that our Izu house would be the perfect place to work bigger and looser. With its fraying tatami mats, leaking roof and crumbling plaster walls, it offered an antidote to Tokyo’s fussy, clean environment. Nowhere in the house felt too precious to create in my own messy way. Armed with my art supplies, I set to work.
The walls and sliding doors soon became canvases on which to experiment. I bought some wallpaper glue from the local DIY store and started attaching my art to the sandy walls, collaging shrine sale finds of old Japanese ledgers and dictionary illustrations with my own paintings. There are blue, acrylic abstracts in the bedroom, bright green monoprints of rice stalks in the hallway and ink drawings of bamboo in the kitchen. Walking through the house feels like being inside my own artwork. It’s heavenly.
My humble Izu beach house has become an art project in itself, and I couldn’t be happier.
Words: Christina Lopp Schwabecher
Illustration: Tania Vicedo
