The 53rd annual Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival (GGAF) gets underway this weekend. The 2025 event will feature 196 artists from 31 states. Also, the selection of this year’s Invited International Artist celebrates the 30th anniversary of Florida and Wakayama, Japan, becoming Sister States.
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“My name is Shinya Ishida. I’m (an) artist. I’m from Japan,” says Ishida, introducing himself.
More specifically, Ishida is from Wakayama and has a personal connection to GGAF’s 2017 Invited International Artist, who is also from there.
“Yume Matsuo, yes, the same city,” he said, noting that they’re good friends. “And she’s a good artist, too.”
Ishida said he was able to ask Matsuo a lot of questions about GGAF and said she gave a good review of the event and the community.
“Very good city, Pensacola,” he was told. “And the people are very kind, the food is good, everything is nice. But everyone is kind, so I have found.”
But Ishida says Pensacola is not so good for his art, since he loves to collect and use what he calls "garbage" in his work.
“The beach here is very clean,” he observed. “So, I cannot find very much trash. Pensacola is very clean.”
However, having a collection of items from the places — such as Pensacola — that he visits is very important in terms of understanding its culture and how to interpret it artistically.
“Whenever I go to some country, I always make a mask, and at this time, I also make a mask using the scrap in here,” Ishida said through his translator Haruna Maki, a Japanese exchange student at the University of West Florida.
Ishida is currently using locally discarded items sent previously by a contingent from GGAF and doing his own search for items to create a mask representing his first visit to Pensacola and to the United States.
“Always first, everything first,” he reiterated. “I want to know what is America. So I look to find what America is.”
According to Ishida, his drive to become an artist, and the development of the kind of art he wanted to make, came into focus while attending Osaka Seikei University.
“During traveling, I met (learned) a lot of cultural things. For example, I met a lot of children who asked me about what religion (religious) things I believe, and I recognized I don’t believe in any god.”
This was a big moment for Ishida in his expression of culture through his art.
“After I came to Japan, I thought, ‘What is my God?’ and then I made a mask. So these things connect to make art using some scraps.”
And, while this practice of using scraps, or items that can be considered trash, is eco-friendly and he is interested in eco-friendly things, he says art is most important in deciding what to collect.
“Whenever I go to the beach, I usually pick up (items) which I feel some inspiration. So, I think picking up everything is not so meaningful,” he explained.
For the people of Pensacola, Ishida says he’s excited to have conversations about the trash that he incorporates into his art and, most importantly, about the cultural exchange.
“Because I brought some trash from Japan, I want the audience to feel the Japanese culture, and I am making art mixing American items and Japanese items, so I want the audience to feel some power,” he stated.
Shinya adds that color is a major influence on his work, including his masks and other pieces ranging from small to large installations. And as a graduate of the Department of Textiles, Faculty of Arts at Osaka Seikei University, where he learned to weave, he says the texture of the materials he uses is also important.
Shina will talk about his art and culture during an artist presentation this evening at 6:30 at Pensacola State College’s Lamar Lecture Hall, Room 1513. And he will be demonstrating and selling his artwork at GGAF throughout the weekend. He’ll be set up near the gazebo.
Asked if he would like to invite the people of Pensacola to come visit his booth, he called for “all of my friends, every friend, if possible.”
The Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival is set for Friday and Saturday, Nov. 7-8, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, Nov 9 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Pensacola’s Seville Square.
