This Asia Week is a celebratory milestone for one participant, Joan B. Mirviss, a dealer with her own gallery at 39 East 78th Street in Manhattan. She traces her interest in Japanese art to a television show on ink painting that enthralled her as a child in Connecticut. She opened her gallery in 1977. “This is my 40th year,” said Ms. Mirviss, who deals in traditional and contemporary Japanese art, not antiquities, and speaks Japanese. “Nothing I have has ever been in the ground or in a temple,” she added.
Ms. Mirviss was one of the founding exhibitors of the International Asian Art Show, which used to operate out of the Park Avenue Armory and later merged with Asia Week.
Among her prize offerings this year is an asymmetrical spherical stoneware vessel about 20 inches in diameter formed of ropy lines evoking the sea. Entitled “Listening to the Waves,” it was created for her anniversary show by the artist Sakiyama Takayuki, whom Ms. Mirviss met at a pottery show almost 20 years ago and then tracked down to his remote rural studio in Japan.
“Something about this man’s work is so camera-friendly,” she said.
“Listening to the Waves” has already been sold to a collector for $20,000, but it will be on display.
