While completing an online certificate in journalism from the OSIJ (Online School of Investigative Journalism), I was also working as a receptionist for a now-defunct, avant-garde art magazine called Art-Z.
They did a feature article on a hot new artist from Japan who was to later become famous as the world-renowned balloon artiste, “Hideki”. In the beginning, he was a completely unknown and unrecognized fringe artist who had once dabbled in clothing design, apprenticing with the likes of Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto. If it weren’t for a Canada Council Arts grant, he would never have achieved the heights of fame and fortune that he did, despite what came afterwards.
You may notice that the sleeve of Hideki's shirt in the Art-Z cover photo is torn. He once explained to me that sometimes during one of his temperamental flare-ups, which happened from time to time when he was in the heat of creation inside his studio, he went into a frenzy and tore at his clothing, which he then wore to the corresponding exhibit of whatever balloon art he was working on at the time. This became a trademark of his, with some budding artistes tearing the sleeves of their own blouses in a frank impersonation of Hideki.
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