Monday, June 30, 2014

Moon Crisis: A Sailor Moon Tribute Art Show 3tArts Interview

Left to Right: Stephanie, Jane, Katie

Moon Crisis: A Sailor Moon Tribute Art Show will be first taking place July 5th at the Rothick Art Haus in Anaheim, California, coinciding with both the release of the new series Sailor Moon Crystal and Anime Expo. The exhibit will feature multiple pieces paying tribute to Sailor Moon in multiple mediums from various artists. The opening nights July 5th and August 9th will have Sailor Moon-themed dancers, a guest DJ and light refreshments.

Moon Crisis: A Sailor Moon Tribute Art Show 
Opening Nights
July 5th and August 9th
6pm-11pm
Rothick Art Haus
170 S.Harbor Blvd
Anaheim, CA 92805
Regular hours
Saturdays
noon-5pm

Sailor Moon and her scouts and lovable talking cat Luna wouldn't have this special tribute show without three talented women who made the show possible: Jane Estantino, Stephanie Han, and Katie McAtee. TTDILA interviewed these honorary Sailor Scouts about the show and how it came together and what we might see beforehand.
TTDILA:First off, please explain who you three are and your favorite Sailor Scout or "guardian", as they're being call now. Are you all artists in you day-to-day life?
We are 3tArts: Three Chicks who love pop culture, Jane Estantino, Stephanie Han, and Katie McAtee, came together with the re-release of the 20th anniversary of the Sailor Moon anime. With a shared love of Sailor Moon, this art show represents their desire to share that love and some fantastic inspired works with other fans.

J: For me, it’s always been Chibi-usa and Hotaru.  I love it when good girls can turn bad.  Am I an artist in my day-to-day life? I wish. I am a doodler and wanna-be artist.
K: When I was younger, Jupiter was my favorite because I too did (and still do) martial arts and loved to cook and bake. But now that I have gotten older and reread the manga, Chibi-Usa has grown on me and she's become my favorite.  I consider myself a hobby artist. I did go to art school for a few years in college and hated it so I switched majors. I enjoy art, I love sketching but I'm not very disciplined and rarely sketch on any sort of regular basis - which is my work is hit or miss a lot. I love being entrenched in the art world and I've found my niche by curating and running art groups like 3tArts and Splendor Device.
S: After I finally read Sailor V for the first time, Venus definitely became my favorite Sailor. I love how she balances her strong leadership skills with being a typical teenage girl. 
You all have pieces in the show; could you tell us about them?

J: Me, personally, no. But the other two do.

K: I will have little square canvases (2”x2”) in the show of obscure characters

S: I decided to do Sailor V, of course and I decided to imagine what being solo could have been like for her. I imagine that it must have gotten rough from time to time.  I’m just not sure if I’m going to hang it or not since having space for our main artists is priority.

What made you want to do a Sailor Moon tribute show, Q Pop of Little Tokyo beat you to it-you do have some of the same artist in your show-anything to do with Sailor Moon's comeback?
Q Pop’s curator and one our curators (Katie) are actually friends.  (They are both part of Splendor Device as artists and models.) The talk of the shows came up in conversation and it was actually coincidental that they were both involved in being curators for a Sailor Moon tribute art show.  Our dates just happened to be different but it all worked out for the best. We also went to Q Pop’s event to show our support and our decision to put on the show most definitely had to do something with the 20th anniversary; that’s for sure!

Your list of artists is quite large now, could you go over some the pieces you're most looking forward shining in the moonlight?

We are most definitely looking forward to:
Glenn Arthur’s piece of Sailor Mercury; Kelly Eden, the popular alt model, make-up artist and an artist herself, has also done a huge Sailor Moon piece with Ophelia Overdose as her model/muse for the piece;
We also have Babs Tarr and her infamous Sailor Bosozoku piece in our show;
Ann Marcellino’s piece that was made for our show but also featured in Kotaku;
and Bara-chan, whose bold lines and colors would just simply blow you away!
How did these other artists get involved?

For some of the artists, we actively pursued them.  For a majority of our artists, we had an open call for artists to submit their portfolios for the show to be considered.  For the open call, all 3 curators had to agree to have the artist in the show!  We had to be strict with this because the response to the open call was extremely overwhelming!

Diane Nguyen of The Quarter House
There's going to be a Moon Crisis arcade machine from Diane Nguyen, what games will be on it? Anything as outlandish going to be at the show? Will there be a Sailor Moon Mech finally?

The arcade- The game is Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S; it’s a fighting game.  Outlandish?- I don’t know about that but we have a few non-traditional pieces in such as a lovely dress inspired by Princess Serenity on display made by Vanessa Walton of Creature of Habit, a custom ball-joint-doll by Irene Garcia!  But if someone showed up in a Sailor Moon Mech- that’d be really awesome! (Someone, please make it happen!)

You're having the show all the way in Anaheim during Anime Expo, why not try and get the show at AX or a closer location?

We decided to go with Rothick Art Haus for 2 main reasons; the owner of the gallery is good friends with one of the curators and the parking situation near the gallery is a lot more manageable than Los Angeles, as you can imagine!

You went to IndieGoGo for funding of the project and raised $520. Why IndieGoGo and what did the funds go towards?

We chose IndieGoGo because it was recommended by several friends.  We only put a goal of $500 to help us and pay for several things and getting us off the ground.  We used the funds to help us print flyers, go around promoting the show and it will also go towards events at opening nights as well as thank you gifts to our volunteers.
Did Sailor Moon touch your imagination as kids? Do you have any fond memories of meatball head and the other
Yue Li
scouts?

J: Though I have been drawing since I was a little kid, Sailor Moon sparked my love for anime and manga.  I would say that it most definitely influenced a lot of my drawings when growing up.  My favorite memory of Sailor Moon was watching it at 7AM on weekday mornings before running off to school.  I used to also search for manga art images of Sailor Moon on my 56k dial-up modem, waiting to download and print the manga art and collect it in my school binder.

K: I have very little imagination for being an artist. I just loved that there was a strong female super hero character. Up until I discovered Sailor Moon in 1992 on the old network channel UPN, all I had was Mutant Ninja Turtles and I always wished that they had a girl in the group because I believed that girls could kick just as much ass as guys can AND look better doing it too. If any special memories came from Sailor Moon it is two things: 1) I met my 3 best friends for life when we discovered we all LOVE Sailor Moon way back when in Jr. High circa 1999. 2) Cindy Yoshizaki, one half of DJ team at both of our opening nights, is a long time childhood friend of 22 years, back in grade school we somehow came up that I loved Sailor Moon, the next day at school she brought me original Sailor Moon merch and stickers and patches straight from Japan (Cindy is Japanese and visits there often). I still have all those little Sailor Moon swag she gave me...albeit they're super faded and I still can't read Japanese.

S: Sailor Moon definitely fueled my interest in the whole anime/manga scene. At first (being a huge Power Ranger fan), I scoffed at the idea. Being only 8-years-old when it released, I definitely thought it was ripping off Power Rangers (which of course, I had no idea about the origins of that show). I decided to watch it anyway, and I've loved it ever since then, doing whatever I had to get my hands on more merchandise! My fondest memory is getting the first soundtrack for the English Dub, then my father telling me the week after it flew out the window. I spent many months afterwards trying to track it down!