In June of 2025, I was in the exhibition titled Ukiyo-e in Play at The Tokyo National Museum. My piece GRIEF (2023) was the 1st Place winner of The Adachi UKIYOE Award 2023. I had lived in Japan for 5 years studying Japanese Washi (paper making) and had grown to love the Ukiyo-e artists, the “artists of the floating world”. This piece is an homage to 2 of them.
I was always extremely inspired by Eva Hesse’s early cord and cloth pieces that were created when she had her studio in a Textile factory in Germany (1964). I loved that she used what was around her as inspiration. Place informed Art. They were playful yet grounded in a formalism of studied Foundational design.
When I moved to my present studio, my neighbor was a furniture manufacturer. He had inherited the business from his father. There were all manner of materials. Foam toppers, endless upholstery swatch books of prints, colors and patterns. I had been gifted an endless source of inspiration. It changed the direction of my work. This piece utilizes the materials that I scrounged from the shop adjoining my studio. I think of these sculptures as studies for larger, more permanent outdoor sculptures.
Inspired by a famous Japanese Urban legend about a once beautiful woman who was murdered by her (supposedly jealous, Samurai) husband who slit her throat. She wanders alone at night asking people "Watashi, kirei?" (Am I beautiful?). If you say “No” she kills you immediately. Identity in Japanese culture is a complex subject. Ideas of beauty compound people's attitudes of themselves.