Lady Butterfly Sculpture is made in Japan. Tomenosuke Sho-ten is located in Hida-Takayama City. The owner, Tomenosuke, contacted me in 2008 when he saw my BUNNY toy . Since then he is collecting my works, visiting NYC to see my shows and projects. I appreciated the fact that someone who lives in mother-island keeps following my actions and encouraging me as big fan / Mr. Toy Otaku.
Not only toy store owner and collector, Tomenosuke is also producer of Tomenosuke Blaster, which is a replica of the Blade Runner's Blaster. I designed the package for it as our first collaboration. In late 2009, I traveled to Hida-Takayama to meet Tomenosuke and his crew, we discussed if we can produce sculpture based on my art work. This was the beginning of the long journey.
When I was in Rome, inspired by all those Baroque sculptures in the museum and everywhere on the street; sublime energy and beauty of real human; and since then I had been dreaming about making AIKO-meets-Baroque style elegant piece.
The most difficult part was to work with a sculptor and create 3D based on the original silhouette image. It takes time to complete just one sculpture, because it consists of 13 little pieces to be assembled together and most of process such as filing and painting are done by hand. I visited their workshop, tackled everyone on the tiny details; body shape, personality, emotion, background story, color and glitter of the skin, and even the street soul. (See my report from workshop )
Lady Butterfly Sculpture is released on 14th of February. I will post more info on my main site and also you can visit here. I am very proud of how it came out.
