Yayoi Kusama

Small paragraph explaining why you have chosen this artist in relation to your Studio practice
Yayoi Kusama's Fireflies on the Water, 2002 completely captures me... I want to be in that space, from the moment I wake to until after I fall asleep, so that I believe that I'm still in the space while i'm sleeping. Everything about the piece is wonderful to me, the colored orbs, the mirrored walls and ceilings, the title... For me the piece is about holding onto innocence and dreams of our youth. Maybe I feel i'm getting older; regretting past decisions, but I'm finding that I'm drawn to optimistic/nostaligic work more and more, and this piece captures both of those sentiments well for me. If it were possible to be sad and happy, optimistic about the future, and forlorn for the past all at the same time, somehow Fireflies on the Water is that for me.
sweet mercy, i just found out the bottom of "Fireflies" is WATER!!!!!!! JUST GOT COOLER!!!!! [via artgasm]

Artist Biography
Yayoi Kusama, b. March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture is a Japanese artist whose paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation. (She has described herself as an "obsessive artist".)
Kusama's work is based in Conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. Kusama is also a published novelist and poet, and has created notable work in film and fashion design. She has long struggled with mental illness.
On 12th Nov 2008 Christies New York sold a work by her for $5.1 million, a record for a living female artist.
[the wikipedia]

"I just ran into photographer Alice Wheeler on the street, and she delivered a great speech. All artists are either obsessive or funky, she said. She is on the funky side. This means the artist works when moved, and is moved to work often enough to be an artist.... This means the artist is not a professional, with expensive equipment and working hours and a tendency to take up a lot of room. Alice says look for more of this work now that the recession is here and settled in."
- Jen Graves, Seattle art critic about Alice Wheeler, Seattle area photographer/artist on SLOG, "VISUAL ART All Artists Are Either Obsessive Or Funky", 8-25-10

"Writing about serial killers does not make a writer a killer, nor does writing about women’s feet make one a fetishist. Unless you do it all the damn time, repeatedly, whether or not there’s lube handy. You’re a bold foot fetishist, Quentin, and may your giant balls be walked on until you cry."
- Mike Brotherton, American hard science fiction writer and astronomer, "Obsessive Artists and Tarantino’s Foot Fetish", 01-08-10

"Everything is beautiful. Pop is everything." [obligatory]
- Andy Warhol, American Pop artist.

"I am for an art that takes its forms from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself."
- Claes Oldenburg, Swedish sculptor

Gleaming Lights of the Souls


Fireflies on the Water


Dots Obsession - New Century, 2000


Baby Carriage, 1964

Infinity Room 1 (QTVR link)

Infinity Room 2 (QTVR link)

Link to an interview with the artist or a review

Link to gallery representing artist - Gagosian

Link to artist website

Artist Blog Post - Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi's photos have a quiet urgency. The work is intimate and sublime, I love that she says she's interested in things that have a short life-span: insects, flowers, clouds, children & elderly faces... It's extremely romantic, and I know that the washed out color palate got huge and now seems cliché, but I'm still drawn to it. She's showing continuously & internationally, just wrapping up a show in Brussels (at the time of this writing). She has a sense of really believing in her work, and following her heart with it. Being personally and deeply invested in her subject. While I'm working through determining my perceived value of art, weighing personal expression vs. political/activist work that seems to have more worth because it "makes a difference", Kawauchi's work is refreshing is detailing the beauty and emotion in every day life. Viewing her work is a quiet and positive experience, with many commenting that her work is "refreshing". While it seems that much of the work I've seen lately is a response to tragedy, repression; or springs from cynicism, I'd like my work to be refreshing.

Rinko Kawauchi was born in 1972 in Shiga, Japan. She discovered photography whilst studying at Seian Junior College of Art and Design. Kawauchi gained international acclaim in 2001 with the simultaneous release of three photography books with Little More publishing : Utatane (catnap), Hanabi (fireworks) and Hanako, for which she was awarded with the 27th Ihei Kimura photography award. In a matter of a few years she published another three significant books : Aila (2004) with Little More publishing; Cui Cui (2005) and The Eyes, The Ears (2005) with Foil Publishing.

‘I want imagination in the photographs,’ she once remarked. ‘A photograph is like a prologue. You wonder, “What's going on?” You feel something is going to happen.’
- Rinko Kawauchi, in interview Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, Sunday 7 May 2006

“It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.”
- Max Webber, 1864 - 1920, German sociologist and political economist

Link to an interview with the artist or a review

Link to gallery representing artist

Link to artist website (Link to Foil Gallery's website, which seems the be the most current, comprehensive online presence for the artist.

Artist Blog Post - Asako Narahashi

Asako Narahashi

Narahashi's "Half Awake, Half Asleep..." series caught my eye- the painterly quality of light, the physicality (weight, texture, movement) of the water, the sense calm coexisting with a feeling of danger. I want to know what equipment she uses, I'm sure some sort of water-proof device. I'm drawn to the idea of purposefully plunging my camera into the water. Underwater housing? Holga in a ziplock bag?

At times the half in/half out begins to feel like a gimmick, something I want to be careful to stay away form in my own work. In the afterward to her book by the same title, reviewer Martin Parr writes "What I really admire about these images is that this juxtaposition has been explored so thoroughly. It feels resolved; everything that could have been explored, has been achieved. It is now a closed mystery". (last page) I hope it's not a "closed mystery". Narahashi's work since the "Half Awake/Half Asleep" series builds on the same foundation.

This work makes me miss the beach, my hometown, and makes me want to jump in to the water with my camera. The idea of presenting a half in-half out moment resonates with my cultural & personal identity. And though the work shows the half-half moment, I'm attracted to it because it has the sense that it could only be done with complete conviction. Narahashi couldn't take these pictures standing on the shore stretching her arms towards the sea and pointing the camera back towards land. She couldn't partially jump in. All or nothing. I hope that my work can convey that as well.

Artist Biography
1959 Born Tokyo, Japan
1998 Newcomer’s Award from the Photographic Society of Japan
2003 Society of Photography Award

2 Quotes - provide quotes with MLA citations commenting on ideas you are interested in the artist you are highlighting
1. "Not in the water, but the water´s edge. The resulting photographs were of a sort that I couldn’t tell whether they were not wanting to go over to the other side (= other world), but standing on this side (= this world) and peeping over a the other side, or looking over at this side from the other side."
A. Narahashi: Kiss in the Dark. Tokyo 2001

2. "Her works [...] somehow make visible as a shared recognition the image of the sea that people embrace. Therein, an uncomfortable felling like seasickness and a pleasurable feeling of floating and entrusting yourself to the sea lodge side by side.[...] They call forth an ambivalent feeling.
Michiko Kasahara: Kiss in the Dark. Tokyo 2001






- link to reviews

- link to gallery representing artist

- link to artist website