From April 5th to 9th, a steady stream of customers came to the atelier.

On April 5th, Kaizawa, who connects people from various genres, welcomed actor Kaito Ai. He is a multi-talented actor, writer, entrepreneur, producer, model, and lyricist.　 He also has a wide knowledge of Buddhism, and Shiozawa was happy to answer many of his questions. Thank you, Mr. Kaizawa, for always introducing me to such fun people.

The next day, on April 6th, Ms. Aimi Yokota, who works for a major metaverse technology company, came to visit us from Osaka. Her name, Aimi, is synonymous with Aphrodite, the character Shiozawa draws, so we call her “Aphro-chan.” She was influenced by her father’s visits to art exhibitions as a child and has a strong interest in art and spent over five hours with us.

On April 8th, our friends Ichise and Tokioka came to visit aterie from Fukui Prefecture. Tokioka had seen the two Kumano Shrine dedication paintings when he was still in the sketch, and was very impressed when he saw the two completed Kumano mandalas. We plan to join them in Kumano for the dedication ceremony in October.

On April 9th, Mr. Shono, the representative director of an association that supports Kyoto’s 100-year-old businesses, held a web conference at the atelier to introduce Shiozawa’s paintings to Buddhist temples in Vietnam, and the two parties shared information on a wide range of topics.

The stream of visitors to the atelier continues into the following week.