Whittier Art Gallery
8035 Painter Ave, Whittier, CA 90602
(562) 698-8710
Touch of Nature
October 2 - 13, 2019
(Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays)
Reception on Saturday, October 5 at 6 pm
Profile of Artists (alphabetical order)
While each participating artist has a unique background and favorite mode of expression, all strive to express their personal interpretations and appreciation of the ‘world’. We all hope this event will be successful by providing the opportunity to touch your heart through defining “NATURE”.
James Greaves, (MFA, Institute of F.A., NYU) is a retired art conservator, who has been promoting the ancient East Asian practice of appreciating natural (non-precious) stones for over 30 years.
Currently he is Curator of Viewing Stones at The Huntington Library where he is transferring his collections to establish the American Viewing Stone Resource Center. Here he provides a few examples to introduce this obscure, yet easily approachable, natural art form.
Charise Guzman, is a designer, with BA in Architecture from USC. She has designed single- and multi-family residential projects, art galleries and museums, higher education facilities, and hospitals. Charise also has a passion for landscape photography and shodo (Japanese calligraphy), for which she currently holds a 1-kyu rank in the Bunka Shodo Academy. When she is concentrating on image training of the shape of a specific “Kanji” (=Chinese character), you can easily feel how good she is.
Taeko Hasumi is an award winning artist in the US and Japan for her unique creation of “Hasumi Cascade”. She also participated in the previous “Touch of Japan” 3 years ago. The blending of natural fabric and pigmentation provides a three-dimensional canvas and this originality earned her MFA from UCLA. Her appreciation of Japanese culture and tradition inspires her weaving art, by incorporating elements of nature into “Hasumi Cascade” to strive the excellence.
Akiko Iida-Klein is a coordinator and director of this event as well as a novice cartoony artist. Akiko used to be a medical research scientist at UCLA/MGH/HMS/Columbia for 30 years but wanted to be an animator for a long time from her childhood.
After taking an early retirement, she finally seems to have found her goal in art after graduating from animation school 7 years ago. “Family” is her base and she wants to express variety of family styles in nature, using cartoony expressions in the media of oil and ink.
Kimiko Koyanagi is a Japanese-Canadian craft artist of spiritual dolls, and a third generation descendant of the traditional Japanese Doll-Making Muraoka Family of Tokyo. For over sixty years, Kimiko has been utilizing traditional doll-making techniques while developing and creating her own distinct and singular sculptural figures. Deep emotion and philosophical meaning, as well as the serenity of “Noh= 能 ” (Japanese traditional performing art), are instilled in the contemporary expressions of Kimiko’s work.
Michiyo Nakamura is a maestro of Sogetsu Ikebana Flower Arrangement. Michiyo participated in our first exhibit “Touch of Japan” 3 years ago, but she may not be able to attend this time. She told me, however, that she might be able to provide some small “crafts” with dry flowers and “sasiko=刺し子” technique. Her instinct of creating “ikebana” is so sharp, so she often sets ikebana very quickly, but still makes her work gorgeously.
Keiko Yamasaki is a UCSD graduate in Applied Mathematics/Scientific Programming and worked as a Software Engineer until her retirement in 2012. She learned Photography at Palomar college. Her favorite subject is Landscape. She frequently visits Joshua Tree National Park and Chubu Sangaku National Park in Japan,-. She joined the Photographer's Eye Collective in Escondido last June and had several group exhibitions at their gallery.
