How I got here and now...
I am sitting in a light-filled room overlooking a park in Brooklyn, where I call my home and studio for over 20 years. I consider myself at this point as a New Yorker although I was originally born in Tokyo in the 60s. I'd first set foot in the United States as a 10-year old on a tour traveling California with a bunch of teenagers, supervised by some adults. We'd visited the Disneyland, Grand Canyon, and (of all places) a bar that had hundreds of chopped dusty neckties taken from patrons hanging from the ceiling --America had made a huge impression on me, to say the least. 5 years after that trip, I moved to Boston to attend high school and eventually college - the beginning of my life in the USA.
My preoccupation is a relationship we have as a specie with other organisms on this planet. How we evolved and began to cultivate our human culture, which turned out to be a two-edged sword, capable of great many things (including art and science) but also of disrupting and destroying our planet and its habitants. Though oscillating (style wise) between figuration and abstraction, 2-D and 3-D, my medium of choice has been "paper" all along. This everyday material that is fragile and easily manipulated, can last thousands of years under a right condition (Egyptian papyrus among them).
Resume (abbreviated)
Education
1996- 1999
Pratt Institute - MFA
1987 - 1989
Tufts University/School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - BFA
Grants and Fellowships
2014
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in
Craft/Sculpture category
2008
Urban Artist Initiative, NY Fellow
2007
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists' Books category
Exhibitions
-Solo and Two-Persons
2023 TORI TORI TORI, Olympia Gallery, New York, May 12 to June 17
2014
201 1
2010
2008
Mutaphilliac, George Adams Gallery, New York. Jan. 16 to March 1
New Cut Paper Studies, George Adams Gallery, New York. Nov. 4 to Dec. 30
Flora/Fauna, The Union Art Gallery, Univ. of Wisconsin, MI. Jan.29 to Feb. 26.
TOTEM, George Adams Gallery, NY. Sept. 4 to Oct. 18.
2007
Recent Paper Cutouts, George Adams Gallery, NY. May 16 to June 23. Flowers & Insects, Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Brooklyn. April 7 to May 6.
-Group (abbreviated)
2023 Two Years and Change, Olympia Gallery, LES, NYC, Feb. 23 -
March 25
2022 Said to be Dreaming, Olympia Gallery, LES, NYC, July 21 - Sept. 10
2021
2020
2019
Cut Up/Cut Out (traveling exhibition), Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock, CA, Sept. 18, 2020 to January 3, 2021
In the Deep Heart's Core (curated by Katherine Meehan), NYU Langone Art Gallery, November 18, 2019 to May 13, 2020
Cut Up/Cut Out, Art Museum of West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV,
September 8 to October 12
Notable group show participation between the year 2008 and 2015
(2015) Object to be Contemplated, Selby Gallery at the Ringling College of Art & Design, FL.
(2014) Select Cuts and Alterations, Foley Gallery, New York. Nov. 19, 2014 to Jan. 11, 2015
(2014) Art on Paper Biannual Exhibition, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, NC. Sept. 24 to Dec. 11.
(2014) Obsessive Reductive, San Francisco Museum of Craft and Art, CA. Feb. 1 to March 30.
(2012) Fairytales, Fantasy, and Fear, Gorelick Galleries, The Mint Museum, NC. March 3 to July 7.
(2011) Animal Instinct, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, WI. Oct. 17 to June 8
(2011) Redefining Drawing, Jennifer Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver, Canada. July 15 to Aug. 22.
(2010) Slash: Paper Under the Knife, Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Oct. 7, 2009 to April. 4.
(2009) Drawn in the Clouds, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland. Oct. 30, 08 to Feb. 2009.
(2009) X: 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Mixed Greens, New York. July 19 to August 14.
(2008) Drawn to Detail, DeCordova Museum, Boston, MA. Aug. 30 to Jan. 4.