Ema Gyaru

A tension between modern and traditional culture is shown in a road sign depicting a stylized silhouette of a Geisha girl with a paper umbrella covered by a red slash. Marshall notes that the sign beneath it reads, “except on regular holidays,” one of many puns built into his work.

The show demonstrates the range of Marshall’s work: paintings in styles from pop art to a modern take on traditional scroll painting and on to sculpture and animation.

Marshall emphasizes the fact that the retrospective is not arranged in any chronology, rather according to different mediums and techniques he has explored. “And it’s not like a series of styles I’m going through or different periods. Many of them are still going on, things I started in Japan 40 years ago that I’m still doing.”

Cases hold reels of hand-painted film and preliminary sketches for other works in the show including “Graffiti Girl.” Standing in front of one case Marshal explained how the stack of sketches of the girl on tracing paper inspired the multi-colored shadow girls on the wall behind the girl.

“The drawings were dropped at random on top of each other on a table in my studio and it hit me that the arms and heads overlapping would be more interesting than just one figure. As I was working on it, it occurred to me that it could be like the animated title sequence for a film. You pan across a wall covered with graffiti; fingers of fog come in; drawings of the girl against the wall come in and as she moves, different positions appear until the last drawing becomes a three-dimensional live girl who picks up these plaques and hangs them on the wall.”

Marshall explained many more details in the painting: the crocodile tear on a sign, the Mt. Fuji traffic cone, the slime monster, Hello Kitty, the bullet train in the distance — but we only scratched the surface. I imagine that this retrospective does the same. A roomful of work only offers the beginning of the story of this amazing artist.

“A Bridge to Japan: Orr Marshall Retrospective” is sponsored by Tomo Japanese Restaurant, which, not coincidentally, is where you will find Fukiko most of the time (it’s her restaurant). A reception will be held during Arts Alive! Saturday, Jan. 4, from 6-9 p.m.

Marshall will also present and discuss his film work in a show titled “Experimental and Animated Films” on Friday, Jan. 12, at 6 p.m. at the Graves Museum. Admission is free. The Morris Graves Museum of Art, located at 636 F St., Eureka is open to the public noon-5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday.

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