After returning from Vienna in 2011, Misawa met Ichiro Inomata (1933-2020), a leading figure in leather craft art, while studying leather craft to broaden his range of expression. He was fascinated by Inomata's work and the man himself, and he came to look up to Inomata as his life master, wishing to be like him as an artist. He wanted Inomata, whom he respected, to see his work, and with this single-minded desire, he challenged the Japan Leather Crafts Exhibition, for which Inomata served as a judge.
For Misawa, who usually makes three-dimensional shoes for a living, leather craft is a way to learn how to express himself on a two-dimensional surface, and this work was the culmination of his efforts.
In shoemaking, he uses a leather knife to skive off the layer of sole leather called Nibe, which is usually discarded. Paying attention to the subtle changes in color tones woven by the leather skived from various types of Nibes, he attaches them to the entire work and expresses them in an artistic manner like a brush-stroke rendering on canvas. The result is a texture that evokes the passage of time and a story. The background, in which the shoes seem to be embedded, is an extension of the sole of the shoe, sewn on using shoemaking techniques.
Bespoke shoes made to order are supposed to be spotless and polished to a mirror-like shine, and Misawa also lives as a shoemaker, aiming for the perfect shoe. On the other hand, this Misawa's work seems to liberate his contradictory feeling that, if the material is natural, it should have more expression.
The shoemaking and artwork creation. “Leather Waste" was awarded The33rd Japan Leather Crafts Exhibition’s “Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Minister’s Award,” showing that only Misawa can express himself by going back and forth between shoemaking and art making.
