This is a blog containing my responses to works done by two MFA students, for the Advanced Sculpture course.
This is my first attempt at such a thing, so please bear with me!
Manami Ishimura
I wish I could have seen what artwork she had shown, and heard her committee's response, for her first critique in the first half of the semester.
To try and describe her work to someone that has never seen it does not give it any sort of credit at all. To say that she creates large sculptural structures using a 3D pen, or that she takes tree limbs and fills the voids between branches with glue, just doesn't give them, or myself, the satisfaction that they deserve. Her artist's statement gets closer than I ever could to describing what they are, in the metaphysical sense.
Artist's Statement
I am a Japanese international graduate student of Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. My experience living in other countries has made me aware of the liminal states between: myself and other entities, English and Japanese languages, consciousness and body. Especially when I lived in a temple in Lamphum, Thailand to practice meditation, my conscious went away from my physical element. In that moment, only breathing connected my body and consciousness.
My works represent the existence between inanimate elements and living organisms; to me, this divide is obscure. For example, a seed is not regarded as life, yet it contains potential life. Once it sprouts, at some point the seed transitions into a living organism. As the process of living becomes visualized, we consider that it starts to be a life, yet this boundary is unclear. The division between categories of non-life and life appears through the dynamic energy transfer, like the sprouting of a plant. This dynamism is the essence of existence.
To focus on this dynamism, I use artificial, inanimate materials that transition between liquid and solid. As I work with PLA plastic, it melts at 170 degrees F and gradually returns to a solid state in 10 seconds. Like the transition from a seed to a sprout, this 10 second interval embodies the dynamic boundary between emptiness and substance. The repetitive movements of my hands as I draw with this plastic generate a liminal state similar to the practice of meditation. The works in my studio practice represent efforts to respect and appreciate the essence of existence.
My works represent the existence between inanimate elements and living organisms; to me, this divide is obscure. For example, a seed is not regarded as life, yet it contains potential life. Once it sprouts, at some point the seed transitions into a living organism. As the process of living becomes visualized, we consider that it starts to be a life, yet this boundary is unclear. The division between categories of non-life and life appears through the dynamic energy transfer, like the sprouting of a plant. This dynamism is the essence of existence.
To focus on this dynamism, I use artificial, inanimate materials that transition between liquid and solid. As I work with PLA plastic, it melts at 170 degrees F and gradually returns to a solid state in 10 seconds. Like the transition from a seed to a sprout, this 10 second interval embodies the dynamic boundary between emptiness and substance. The repetitive movements of my hands as I draw with this plastic generate a liminal state similar to the practice of meditation. The works in my studio practice represent efforts to respect and appreciate the essence of existence.
Her pieces have an ethereal feeling unlike anything I've ever experienced in a sculpture, in art itself. They really are an embodiment of that split second of time between forms, between non-life and life.