Artist Statement

Every time I see a rusty nail on the ground, I put it in my pocket. I dream of what it was before and what it might become. Once I made a sculpture with discarded nails I happened upon and re-membered them. To "remember" is to put back together, to make whole. In my work, I'm interested in giving broken, cast-aside things new life. I want to find the meaning in meaningless. The compulsion to collect detritus seems a pointless gesture, yet it is precisely this "odd" behavior that reveals who we are. I explore the humanness of absurdity and futility through laborious processes, finding value in failure. I cherish a process of making that invites lived experience and fantasy of what could be.
In my early 20's I escaped Japan and came to the US. As a woman and resident "alien" I often think about what it means to go across geographical and emotional borders. This question of fitting in is deeply embedded in the objects I create. I purposely place myself in a bind to generate a mass from small hand-crafted objects. As a Japanese woman, I've been told numerously I must be quiet and demure. I don't accept this stereotype: I want to make work that has sensitive, delicate details, but are bold. I embrace contradiction, parodying my identity as one who doesn't "fit" in a category.
What I see, hear, and feel in everyday life —an overheard conversation, the slurry of paper pulp, or an entangled ivy vine creeping up on a concrete wall— allures me and becomes a starting point. Often the evidence of my action is visible and the process itself becomes my art. While engaging myself in painstaking labor, I manifest everything is in a state of becoming.