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

On April 5th, Mr.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 cool people.

The next day, on April 6th, Ms. Aimi Yokota, who works for a major metaverse technology company, came to visit us from Osaka. The name Aimi is synonymous with Aphrodite, who appears in some of Shiozawa’s works, so we nicknamed her “Aphro-chan”. As a child, she often visited art exhibitions with her father, which fostered her strong interest in art. Thus, she spent five hours talking with us about our projects.

On April 8th, our friends Ichise and Tokioka came from Fukui to visit our atelier. Tokioka had seen the two Kumano Shrine dedication paintings while they were still in the sketching stage, 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.

We enjoyed a never-ending stream of visitors that continued into the following week.