January 11, 2012

EastEdge Partners, Inc. (headquartered in Tokyo, President: Jason Holt), in collaboration with Nozawa Hospitality, is working on several art projects to spice up life in Nozawa Onsen village and ski resort.

Jason Holt, President of both EastEdge Partners and sister company Nozawa Hospitality, is striving to create opportunities in the small village ―that deeply impressed contemporary artist Okamoto Taro’s in 1974―　for a ‘slow’ and relaxed appreciation of art coinciding with the village atmosphere.  President Jason Holt said: “The historical link between Nozawa Onsen and art is very strong and we intend to further emphasize this relationship in order to contribute to the village revitalization.”

At present, the main ongoing art and creative projects in Nozawa Onsen are “Art Café Hütte” and “The Craftroom.” These are in addition to well known existing village galleries “Oboroduki no Yakata” with regular themed exhibitions and the “Ski History Museum”

Nozawa Hospitality, in collaboration with Utte (artist consortium support company and dealer of art goods), in December 2012 opened “Art Café Hütte”, a creative space dedicated to the exhibition and sale of art goods and located inside Address Nozawa, a contemporary designer apartment hotel opened in August 2011. The concept of Hütte is “an artistic mountain lodge with Scandinavian design flavor” With its simple and modern interior design, it is an ideal location to admire and buy original pieces of art or just relax reading a book, tasting good coffee and eating a piece of hand-made cake. Utte and Nozawa Hospitality plan to jointly hold regular workshops and art events in the future months.

“The Craftroom”, an internet café and video creation space is located just in front of the Nagasaka Gondola in Nozawa Onsen ski resort, and was opened in December 2012.  It is currently operated by Tokyo producers in collaboration with Nozawa Hospitality. Professional and amateur film makers have worked together to provide guests with all the tools to edit and produce video material taken on the ski resort’s slopes and in the local area. This creative space is set to become a cool gathering spot for skiers and snowboarders in winter and mountain bikers, hikers and skaters in other seasons.  Contests and events will be jointly organized by “The Craftroom” and Nozawa Hospitality.

In addition to the above projects, Nozawa Hospitality has started in January 2012 the series of events “Urban art meets traditional Japan.” Suiko, from Hiroshima, and Skope, from Singapore, two internationally accomplished urban artists, have worked in residence in Nozawa Onsen’s event space “The Dojo” from January 5th-8th, with the art show on the evening of January 7th.  The concept of the event was to keep alive the memory of artist Okamoto Taro and bridge the gap between contemporary art and Nozawa Onsen’s traditional culture through the work of two international urban artists. Nozawa Hospitality plans to organize similar events with other contemporary genre themes in 2012.