This coming January Seattle's innovative Center on Contemporary Art (COCA) will come alive with a bright and bouncy cornucopia of Japanese pop culture. Our show, Japan- O-Rama, will feature works of Japanese musicians, comic artists, and writers and filmmakers. However, Japan-O-Rama is also a homage by U.S. and Canadian artists who love and delight in this culture. Take Su Job, an artist and designer who shows fashion regularly in Tokyo. Su is creating for us an original collection of clothing whose designs marry traditional Japanese dress forms along with her personal vision of the international mode. Some of her work will dot the floors of our gallery but not until the Japan-O-Rama fashion Show will the full collection appear during a soiree of projected light, exotic food and traditional and avant-garde Japanese music We look forward to this event with great anticipation.

But Japan-O-Rama's many other special events claim equal attention. Jeff Taylor, an experimental musician and an aficionado of new Japanese music, his band having played with the likes of Japan's well-known The Boredom's, will present a Japanese Band Concert Series during our show's six week run. And this performance series will be supplemented by a unique performance events the appearance of a Japanese anime singer. This type of performer, unique to Japan, has never appeared in the Pacific Northwest before.

What of the show itself? On opening night, Two costumed young women acting in the style of those proper young ladies who greet customers entering Japan's best department stores, will welcome guests to Japan-O-Rama. However, we promise a modern Twist on the greeter tradition courtesy of the comic addled mind of Japan-O-Rama's creator, Clarke Fletcher. visitors will then proceed through the Hello Kitty Grotto, featuring the popular Japanese feline ambassador in a sea-cave environment the kitty herself seated on a red- tipped lotus floating upon a pool of luminous aquamarine. This stunning grotto is the product of our design group, "Team Kitty" led by Seatte illustrator Weeze Thompson.

From there the Japan-O-Rama® Arcade & Retail Starship temps the visitors with pulsing light and sound. Japanese CD ROM games and an intense anime experience booth provide the sensory thrills while overhead an 18 foot wide-screen multi-media blitz courtesy of Seattle group Live Nude Girls showers the room with a collage of sound, flying logos and a variety of anime action. (designed by Shawn Wolfe, Art Donnely) Then take home a Japanese goody or two from a retail environment scientifically engineered to accommodate and satisfy that sudden peculiar craving for Japanese Product.

The remaining space consists of lush displays of Wall Art Gallery featuring colorful paintings, posters and light boxes from Japan's top manga and anime artists, alongside works by U.S. artists working in these traditions. finally, flickering on the gallery walls will be anime films of the sexy and cute variety such as Takada's Super Cat Girl and Sonoda's Bubblegum Crisis.