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Ukiyo-e Prints in the Mike Lyon Collection

Mike Lyon (artist b. 1951) was fortunate to have grown up familiar with Japanese prints. In his youth Lyon’s parents and grandparents displayed examples that certainly inspired his own artistic development. He began acquiring Japanese color woodcuts early in his career as an artist. The types of prints that feature most prominently among the many hundreds in Lyon's collection reflect the artist’s deep appreciation of the human figure and the expressive facial portrait. The vast majority of Japanese prints in the Lyon collection represent views of actors yakusha-e) and beautiful women (bijin-ga), and in particular the close-up, bust-length portraits of the same (okubi-e).

A number of wonderful people have contributed time and expertise to help catalog the Lyon Collection. Madeline Cass and Carrie Riehl did much of the routine data entry. Cori Sherman North provided narrative for several of the prints, especially those prints which she curated into the Miriana Kistler Beach Museum exhibition of 2009. And especially, ESPECIALLY, ESPECIALLY Jerry Vegder who has methodically visited each object and entity in turn, traversing the entire database repeatedly, correcting innumerable errors in data entry, my own misunderstandings, and the often completely erroneous information provided by vendors. His scholarship, commentary, eye for detail, prose, and translations have deeply enriched the site. Jerry's knowledge and expertise are beyond mine and his devotion the this project has been beyond anything I might have imagined. Jerry, thank you SO much for your incredible contributions to what is clearly a never ending and monumental task.

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Object Types People Exhibitions