Tsuyo's sculpture

[Hotaru Tsuyo]

With a few ranks of fame, it makes sense that others might know of PC's past work, and Yakumo's music thread has me thinking ooc chat is a good place for that information...though there's not nearly as much work here.

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Even among the rough and tumble miners of the Firefly, art exists. There are work songs aplenty, and more for celebrations. Downtime between jobs or in transit is often filled with work on personal crafts, and the ships which serve as homes often sport an amazing amount of custom work—etched and painted plasteel, protective charms woven of worn out wire and cord, multi-part origami folded from ration wrappers, and clothing decorated with embroidery and creatively used trash are not uncommon.

As small as the clan is, very few in the Empire ever see such crafts. But in the past decade, Hotaru Tsuyo's sculpture has found its way into respectable galleries and the collections of patrons looking for something a bit new. The aesthetics of working with materials at hand and carving a mark in the darkness of the vast void run through much of her work. Her growing popularity and patrons with deeper pockets have enabled her to work at the scale she'd dreamed of, carving into asteroids and other large chunks of space rock.

Tsuyo’s asteroids:

The installation for this winter court is her 5th, though the tight schedule means it is not her most ambitious.

Most will only see these works via drone footage, as few have the time, money, or spacewalking skills to jaunt out to giant space rocks. Each has only one intended entrance, though there are other passageways installed during construction. All but one of her works is internal, with the carvings hollowing out the inside of these drifting mountains of stone. Careful planning creates organic 3D designs out of tunnels, which are not apparent via drones, but only through looking at the maps or mockups of the installations. Inside, the tunnels are skillfully carved into designs that invite close examination; the largest features carved rough with carefully placed explosives, while smaller, finer details obviously took up the bulk of the creation time.

The first thing one finds is a small shrine. This is traditional for all Firefly mining. A shrine is placed early, with ceremony and offerings to entice the spirits of the place to settle within to rest in comfort while mining is taking place. There are many small superstitions and rituals to appease the kami as the miners blast open and remove mountains of stone. Many Firefly ships contain a shrine that supposedly holds spirits from objects that were obliterated in the course of mining. Protecting and appeasing them until they can be brought to a temple to be rehomed is deemed important, as many believe earth kami would be quite upset to be left drifting in space to find a new home. When you live most of your life dependent upon the spirit machinery of small ships, you might get a bit superstitious about the dangers to that fragile existence.

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, spiritual motifs permeate her work—from shrines scattered throughout winding tunnels, to symbols and depictions of the Fortunes, to prayers carved along the walls. In interviews, Tsuyo has said that her work is, in part, a reflection of her ongoing thoughts about the relationship between humanity and divinity as both move through the immensity of space.

A more mundane feature is a carving of a cat, curled up in contentment that appears in all of her work at whatever scale. She’s denied ever having such a pet, but reveals this one's name as 'Maru.'

Existing installations:

Current work in one of the objects following the WoD moon: “Secret Glimpses Bless Our Eyes” To be revealed in game.

First work: “The Emerald Empire” Feels almost like a traditional gallery room that just happens to be built inside a distant object around Amanoseki. There are three works on display there that seem to be different style versions of the same subject—a single cherry blossom. While the ‘gallery’ itself is roughly carved, the blossoms are detailed and delicate…one carved from a pinkish bit of stone in realistic detail, another done in an abstract form out of iron-rich, red stone, and another stylized as in an old-fashioned mon inset into something that resembles an old-fashioned personal seal. They are displayed as they might be at a modern gallery, encased in glass at eye level with well-placed lighting.

Second work: “In the Mountains of Tengoku” Her only external carving shapes a shepherd moon in the Phoenix’s Tadaka system. It was a challenge, and required the aid of a number of shugenja to avoid disturbing the moon’s orbit when blasting off chunks of moon to roughly shape it into heavenly mountains with gleaming shapes able to be glimpsed when they catch the distant sun’s lights. It is meant to be viewed from a distance, as the mountains and shapes are all left rough, never able to be quite brought into focus.

2 other works currently left undefined.

[Hotaru Tsuyo]

More detail on the screen showing drone footage of Tsuyo's work in Ayame's gallery event.

"Secret Glimpses Bless Our Eyes"

Drone footage shows rough-hewn passageways that are large for human traffic and what feels like an immense, unlit chamber with glimmers of light spangled across the faraway walls. As the camera slowly moves toward the lights, the length of the approach highlights the sense of a vast space, though its true dimensions are unknowable in the darkness. Eventually, small carved scenes behind elaborate stone ‘screens’ are revealed, depicting almost familiar, but definitely divine subjects whose identities and actions are open for interpretation.

One carving is of a figure in elaborate, modern robes, their face hidden within a deep hood, but seeming to glow with the same touch of divine light seen on many of the figures. The cant of the hood gives the impression that they are looking down at a sphere that seems to float before them (an easy trick when you can chose the only angle people see) The surface is carved with stylized clouds, wafting the shape of the kanji for Yume-do. Someone watching over a world of dream.