art space co-jin

UESHIMA Koki

Born in 2001
Employment Support Facility Village REN

Graduated from Chutan Special Support School in March 2019. In April of the same year, he began living at the Group Home 180-ban, and started creative activities at the Village REN.
From his time at the special support school, he demonstrated intrinsic imagination, demonstrating his talent to the fullest by making his own unique crossword puzzles which he thought up himself, as well as quite intricate and difficult origami works, and short stories of fantasy worlds. Of special interest are his minutely detailed maps, which he draws using ballpoint pens without any rough sketching beforehand. The names of the places are all from his imagination. Sometimes he names them after sweets, other times after flowers. For him, the maps are dotted with words that describe a world that is completely safe and secure.

KATSUYAMA Yuichiro

Born in 1984
Kyoto City Fushimi Gakuen Atelier Yoohoo!!

While spending time in the ceramics room at the facility—where he feels the most relaxed, he creates clay works by rolling the clay into balls between his fingers, or by watching others, and pounding the clay. The clay balls have been nicknamed ‘Katsudama.’ In recent years, he arranges the clay in lines on a board as if according to some system, and announces “I did a good job!” Sometimes he will say “I’m going to draw,” and uses crayons or colored pencils and with incredible speed and energy fills the paper. He writes numbers, or his name, and on top of that, lines of various colors, layering the strokes. Because of the intensity of his working style, fragments of the crayons leave a bumpy texture, which adds a new layer of expression to the drawings. Whether it’s building ceramics, tearing up old paper into small pieces, or drawing, his work continues on in the way of a butterfly going from flower to flower.

KIBIKI Hideaki

Born in 1960
Employment Support Facility Village REN

Around age 12, because of his father’s work, he moved from Osaka to Ibaraki, and later to Chiba. At age 18, he entered the Graphic Design program at the Nippon Design Vocational School (Currently the Nippon Design Welfare College). After graduating, he returned to Kameoka City, Kyoto Prefecture and moved in with his parents.
He draws with pencil and colored pencils in his sketchbooks, and his specialties are illustrations and delicate drawings of animals. He produces works nearly every day, regardless of whether he is at home or at the facility.

YAMAGUCHI Keitaro

Born in 2000
General Incorporated Association Various Connections
Kyoto Tsunagari Welfare Association

Currently resides in Kyoto City. From his elementary school days, he used a wide variety of different pens, trying out their different colors and how they wrote. In high school, he was able to produce large flags and drawings, which served as a spark for him to draw by making tons of circles. At present, if he has a pen and paper, he can draw anywhere.
He has attended the Kyoto Tsunagari Welfare Association since 2019, where he does drawings and began digital photography. During outings, he often shoots more than 100 photos in one hour. With his left hand on the lens, his subjects, or ‘clues,’ the act of releasing the shutter may be a trace of the enjoyment he gets through his fingertips.