Bibai once prospered as a coal-mining city. Thirty thousand people, mostly involved in coal-mining, lived in the east Bibai area where the Mitsubishi coal mine was located. Naturally there were several schools for the miners’ young, and the town always rang with the lively voices of children. This was one of those schools, originally the Bibai public Sakae elementary school. Let me show you the school building and gymnasium, where more than one thousand two hundred children used to attend, now reborn as the art plaza “Arte Piazza Bibai”, along with the nature surrounding the school that is home to about forty pieces of sculpture by Babai’s world-renowned sculptor Kan Yasuda.
What is Arte Piazza Bibai?
Now looking at the sculpture from afar, now sitting down and relaxing on it, now lying on it and feeling its texture, people enjoy Kan Yasuda’s work in their own way.
Arte Piazza Bibai has continued to evolve since its opening in July of 1992, gradually expanding in space and increasing its sculpture collection. Arte Piazza means “Art Plaza” in Italian.
At present Arte Piazza Bibai has seventy thousand square meters of land. The first floor of the wooden school building is used as a kindergarten, and the second floor is a gallery that exhibits sculpture in classrooms that retain the flavor of the past. Classical music concerts, jazz concerts, and lectures, etc. are held in the art space, which is the remodeled gymnasium, and on the marble open-air stage. Kan Yasuda’s white-marble or bronze abstract sculpture, placed here and there both inside and outside, can be touched, and it is an impressive thing to see children playing joyfully about his work.
The entire plaza is popular to many people as a space to interact with the sculpture, and as a space for inner reflection.
Arte Piazza Bibai has various expressions throughout the four seasons. In winter the whole space is covered with snow, and dotted with the footprints of red squirrels and wild rabbits, footprints which can give us the joy of imagining many things.
“A Lesson in Carving One’s Spirit”
“A Lesson in Carving One’s Spirit”, held monthly in the sculpting studio “Studio Arte”, is very popular.
A thirty-centimeter-square piece of white marble or pumice stone changes into “one’s own shape” after carving or grinding, and becomes the shape of one’s spirit upon completion. The greatest attraction of this class, held with a limited capacity of forty people, is in how people of various ages get together in the same pursuit. Being immersed in the same activity seems to be an enjoyment for all people, from the elementary school boy to the woman over ninety years old.
The resulting “shape” is important of course, but upon review the participants unanimously declare how, more than anything else, the process was a fun and precious experience.
Kan Yasuda instructing “A Lesson in Carving One’s Spirit” class.
We receive comments from the participants such as: “I took the little monument home and placed it in my living room, and I look at it every day. How mysterious that I feel comforted daily by the shape, incomplete yet with Arte’s spirit,” or “How lucky I was to participate in ‘A Lesson in Carving One’s Spirit’, to spend time, no matter how short, together with people in learning how difficult it is to test oneself on white marble.”
Mr. Yasuda himself teaches the classes when his schedule allows. Please contact our office for further information.
