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Leandro Soto "Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky," resonate these words of Rabindranath Tagore, India's national poet, and an artist in his own right, into the works of Leandro Soto, multidisciplinary visual/installation and performance artist. "I am deeply inspired by India and the work of Tagore," the artist says. "He combines the beauty of the verse with the knowledge." "I am traveller," Soto professes, his eyes gleaming from the round Gandhiesque bespectacled frame, recounting that his journeys have been a key and critical influence in his creative thought process. Growing up in Cienfuegos, a coastal city in south Cuba, Soto had his first stroke of inspiration when he was five. "I seem to be surrounded by spirits and energies, which used to guide me and I started painting," he recalled, sitting cross-legged, as cool breeze kissed the wind chime

"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it," says Confucius, whose words of wisdom are embedded in the crystal-clear brew from the Land of the Rising Sun. Sake, the potent confluence of spring-fed water and grains of rice, has been an integral part of Japanese society, and Noriyoshi Nagai's family tradition for six generations. "It (Sake) is a historical beverage consisting of rice and water; it is not just a business, everything I produce are like my children," Nagai said. Nestled in a valley among the snowcapped Mt Hotaka range, Kawaba village is a postcard-perfect setting. Lush green foliage, crisp cool air and the clear spring water flowing down the streams, which Nagai recalls, became the source of inspiration for his ancestor Shoji Nagai, who founded the Nagai Sake brewery in 1886. The idea for the brewery came from the inherent desire to preserve the sanctity of the nature and purity of water. "The water is so pure that you can