Breakthrough

 

'Our Nature", a Singer family show presented earlier this year in

Rundel Library, Rochester, New York 

January  thru  May 2024

We are proud and pleased to be a part of a creative family engaged in the visual arts community.

Just recently, in the New York Times, they ran an article about an exhibition happening at The Brooklyn Museum that features local artists who may not have gotten this form of exposure before.

Our niece, Akiko Yamamoto and her husband Phil Scherer are involved in the arts and they live along Eastern Parkway near the Brooklyn Museum.  Akiko has a painting/collage  in this new exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum, and her work was singled out by the writer and critic Max Lakin.  It must be nice to have favorable comments about the artwork published in  The Times!  This is a big show with over 200 pieces of artwork selected from over 4000 entries.

The Brooklyn Museum then sent out an e-mail with Akiko's work and a statement from her talking about how she arrived at making this artwork called:  "Shoji 4 - Bedford Avenue.  Here is her work and her artist statement:

Shoji 4 - Bedford Avenue#153

Akiko Yamamoto

2024

Collage, rice paper, magazine paper, origami paper, silver leaf, acrylic paint on wood

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DESCRIPTION

"My childhood home was built by my father in the traditional Japanese style, and it was filled with shoji doors. Because they are made of paper, they would often tear and need to be repaired, and I remember watching my mother do this work. She would boil rice flour to create a rice glue, and use it to bind fresh paper to the frames. I loved the clean white translucence of the refreshed screens. 

I wanted to commemorate this tradition in my Shoji series. I live and make art in Brooklyn, so my shoji screens incorporate the textures of the city. They are not minimal clean white, but rather show the complexity of textures, patterns and colors. I wanted to embrace the essence of Brooklyn’s bold attitude.

When I start a new work in this series I begin by building the shoji 'frame' on the canvas. As my mother did, I make my own rice glue and use it to bind layers of material. The layers accumulate like memory and experience, obscuring the ones below. Later, the layers are worn away again revealing them as a new moment to explore.

This one, Shoji 4 / Bedford Ave, is named for Brooklyn’s longest street, which passes through so many layers of culture along its length."

–Akiko Yamamoto

I applaud Akiko and hope to see her artwork when we visit Brooklyn in a few weeks!