「機の音、製糸の煙、桑の海」小説家 徳冨蘆花はかつての上州の風景をこう詠んだ。蚕が餌である桑の葉を食べる時、その音はまるで雨のようだったという。今は聞こえない音を遠い場所の誰かが想像し、この場所の誰かは思い出す。その記憶の集積は山に囲まれたこの場所で大きな海とさえならないだろうか。中之条の町の人たちから譲り受けた透明なガラス板にこの場所の土で絵を描く。煙のように微かな記憶の糸が山を越え海をすり抜けて繋がりあえる絵画となるように。
“The sounds of looms, the smoke of filature factory and the immense number of mulberry trees” The novelist Roka Tokutomi once wrote a prose poem about the scenery of Joshu. When the silkworms ate the mulberry leaves, the sound was just like rain. Someone in a distant place imagines a sound that cannot be heard now, and someone in this place remembers it. I wonder if the accumulation of these memories could ever become a big ocean in this place surrounded by mountains. I drew a new landscape with the soil of this place on a transparent glass plate given to me by the people of Nakanojo. I hope that the faint thread of memory, like smoke, will cross the mountains and slip through the sea to become a painting that connects us all.