Some Art I Liked: Five Minutes on Masako Miki
Masako Miki, Karakasa-obake (Umbrella Ghost), 2018
(Above: Karakasa-obake (Umbrella Ghost), 2018, Masako Miki, Wool on foam and wood, 74 × 21 × 21 in) Click to enlarge.
TL;DR:
Artist Status: Masako is an emerging artist with growing national recognition for her large felt sculptures.
Price: Her sculptures cost around $35k and up, depending on size. Her paintings are around $30k and up.
Where else can I see her work? Her work can be seen in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Triennial in downtown San Francisco until May 2024. Masako is represented by CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions in San Francisco, and RYANLEE Gallery in New York.
(Above: Gallery booth of CULT Aimee Friberg at SF FOG Fair 2024, featuring Masako’s sculptures and paintings) Click to enlarge.
Masako Miki is a multimedia artist whose work ranges from sculpture and large-scale installations to paintings. She was born in 1973 in Osaka, Japan. She earned her MFA from San Jose State University, San Jose (CA), and now lives and works in Berkeley, CA.
Her Style
Masako’s felt sculptures begin with giant mounds of wool and felting needles. A miniature version of the piece is first designed by hand, then 3D scanned; she then uses a CNC miller to carve industrial foam into the final shape. Once the structure is set, Masako reverts to a labor-intensive method of incorporating the final look and colors by hand-needling small sections of the felt at a time. (For a sample of how this needling works, check out a clip of a smaller felt “painting” from a YouTube crafter.)
(Above: Hyakki Yagyo (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) One Million Years of Journey with Evergreen Fox, 2024, Watercolor and acrylic on paper, 46 x 78 in) Click to enlarge
Contemporary Context
Masako references Japanese yokai in her works but accented with a modern point of view. Yokai are creatures from Japanese folklore often referred to as "shapeshifters" or supernatural beings. These entities can take various forms, ranging from mischievous spirits to more malevolent creatures. They are deeply ingrained in Japanese mythology, with countless variations in shape, abilities, and behaviors, and can transform into animals or inanimate objects.
In the piece above, the umbrella has turned into a shapeshifter decorated with rainbow raindrops and a happy disposition. This new being now lives in two worlds and is Masako’s colorful symbol of multiculturalism and the possession of multiple identities. Besides being colorful and inviting art pieces, these avatars are the artists’ portrayal of how people deal with new environments and cultures. Masako has stated that these characters are based on her own experiences of adapting to two cultures when she moved to the United States at age eighteen.
(Above: Sashiko Ghost, 2023, Masako Miki, Wool on foam and wood, 60 × 25 × 25 in) Click to enlarge
Masako also takes on the subject of environmental consciousness with her work. In the piece above she references sashiko, the embroidery work on indigo-dyed fabric used as reinforcement stitching in Japan, often used for mending or quilting. The idea of a fabric reanimating into a living creature is a callout to sustainability, and a symbolic reminder of the reusability of objects around us. Umbrella Ghost—the first sculpture above—was shaped to look like the cheap umbrellas used (and disposed) all over Japan.
Impact
Her crowd-pleasing work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv. She has also created several large-scale bronze installations, including San Francisco (Uber Headquarters) and Shenzhen (Oh Bay). In 2023, the KMAC Contemporary Art Museum presented Shapeshifting, a solo exhibition of her felt sculptures. Her pieces are in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (CA), and The Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation (NY).
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