Continuing through September 1, 2019
Hiromi Takizawa’s sculptural works of hand-blown glass, volcano ash, lights and live plants make for a mesmerizing display that responds to and appropriates from nature. In “Sleeping Forest,” several dozen colorless glass branches suspended from clear strings sway slightly from the air currents. These recall the artist’s memories of visiting forests as a child in her native Japan. This room-sized installation takes inspiration from the 1960s and 70s Light and Space aesthetic in the way it captures the gallery’s ambient light. “Ultraviolet,” combining frosted glass panels, neon lights in colors of the rainbow and native Japanese plants, is especially evocative of Light and Space. Recalling the infusion of light in harmonious environmental spaces, the artist explains that this work suggests, “the hazy colors of a California sunset.”
“The Little Things,” a seemingly random display of ten small colorful and perfectly formed rocks, is a collection of striated and speckled fusion of blown glass and volcanic ash. She built these pieces by a complex process that includes layering and fusing the colored glass, slicing through the layers to unearth patterns within, then rounding them with a glass blowing technique. The contrasting “Trail Gazing” is a site-specific installation of a wall covered with small greenish clumps of layered powdered glass. it resembles the moss and lichen that the artist admired along hiking trails when she was a child. She explains that the fragile lichen serve as a metaphor for her own experience in an unfamiliar country, adding that she will continue to install more powdered glass fungi to the wall throughout the course of the show.
