I am sitting in a light-filled room overlooking a park in Brooklyn, which I have called my home and studio for over 20 years. I consider myself, at this point, 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 Disneyland, the 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. Five 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 the relationship we have as a species 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 many great things (including art and science), but also of disrupting and destroying our planet and its inhabitants. 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 the right conditions (Egyptian papyrus among them) continues to fascinate me.