Art was the only place I had completely to myself. It was my own little world where I could freely express myself. As a fourth generation American Japanese, I was always under the impression that I had to try to be the perfect daughter. There weren’t any questions to be asked, I always had a role. A place - a social obligation to my family.
Whenever I feel sad, disappointed, or am struggling with some thing, I draw. I like using pencil, paper, graphite, pen, charcoal, paint, and photos to create multilayered works. Images are received differently than words. They also speak a language that not everyone understands. My work tends to be about human nature and issues in the world I struggle with. For example, I made a piece that acted as a commentary on the media’s portrayal of the perfect woman and man. My piece I over exaggerated being skinny, strong, and shallow. The two figures were forced to co-exist on the same plane. It was not a harmonious existence. In order to see both figures you would need to rotate the paper 180 degrees.
My current project is about filling in the gaps of memories. People do not remember every detail from their past experiences. As time since the past event increases, the amount of information we remember and the connections between parts of the experience tend to decrease. Medium sized images will be cut into smaller pieces and altered so that when two pieces that are supposed to connect do not connect because part of the information has been removed. When the images are viewed, the viewer’s mind will want to fill in those gaps and connect the two parts of a whole, but the connection is already gone and cannot be filled perfectly with any thing short of the original.
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