Congratulations to Seiji Murakami CC’23, who has been named a 2023-2024 Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling fellow!
The Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Fellowship provides support to graduating seniors and recently graduated alums in the visual and fine arts for travel and living expenses to pursue independent, year-long projects outside of the United States. A New York City native, Seiji will spend the year in Japan studying the techniques of traditional paperworking through an apprenticeship in Saitama prefecture and researching in Echizen, one of the few remaining papermaking towns in the country.
As an aspiring artist and educator, Seiji’s year in Japan will prove invaluable in self-training, research, and broadening of a network devoted to the unique craft. At Columbia, Seiji pursued a visual arts major and English concentration, and will draw upon training in both fields to better understand and contribute to efforts at preserving the vulnerable craft, explore how paper may offer a vehicle for communal collaboration in a craft-based community, and recognize the cultural foundations and heritage of this unique art form. Seiji hopes this experience ‘will build a basis of knowledge to pass on through workshops and demos which foreground preservation as an act of reverence’ and to leave Japan with more questions than answers.
For more information about the Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Fellowship, please reach out to Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.