Artist Interview: Mariko Jesse

Mariko is an illustrator and printmaker. She’s been part of Art Byte Collective for a year. In this interview she talks about color, artists and her studio practice.

Do you have a favourite color or color palette?
I tend to use organic colours in my work, like browns, greens and reds, but I like adding little details of bright pink and yellow.

Do you have a favourite artist?
I love artists whose work is unlike mine, but make me think in a new way, or surprise me and inspire me conceptually, eg. Howard Hodgkin, Cornelia Parker, Richard Wentworth, and James Turrell. I’m also inspired by illustrators, such as Tove Jansson, Quentin Blake and Laura Carlin.

Explain your work in up to 40 words.
I’m an illustrator and printmaker, working in etching and mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock), and my prints are generally small and delicate. Being Eurasian, my work explores ideas about sense of place, belonging and mixed heritage. 

Do you pursue any themes? If so, what?
My work often features ceramics, specifically chinaware concerning tea. Tea, and its visual history, is endlessly fascinating to me. I’m inspired by ordinary things, like the teacups we use every day.

Describe your studio practice? Do you have any habits or rituals when producing art?
I can only start making prints when the studio or place I’m working is completely clean and tidy. It quickly becomes chaotic, but it has to start tidy!

Where is your favorite place to do work? Do you have a dedicated workspace or routine?
Working in the print studio is one of my favourite things. It’s a separate environment from my daily life, and I’m then able to shift my mind into a creative mode. I do my illustration work in a design studio, but love making prints in a space where I can make a mess!

Do you do any research and what kind if you do?
I always do research before starting any project or artwork. Usually it’s visual research, in the form of sketches from museum or library visits. I sketch all the time, and my many sketchbooks become my inspiration and source of information.

How long have you been working in the medium used for your work for In The Details?
I made my first print at around 4 years old; a monoprint made at kindergarden, but formally learned etching at art college. I studied mokuhanga in 2004 in Japan.

What do you like about this medium and what are its challenges?
There’s something special about printmaking, an element of chance, that I absolutely love. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but just as often it can be perfect! I’m concentrating on mokuhanga at the moment, and looking forward to experimenting more.

What would you like people to know about your work.
My works are prints, which means they are part of an edition of a certain number, but as I usually work into my prints individually afterwards, in a variety of ways, they then become unique pieces, and not part of an edition. That’s why they are usually marked 1/1. 

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Artist Interview: Ling Liu

Ling Liu is based in Yokohama and is part of Launch Pad Gallery. She studied printmaking in San Francisco. In this interview, Ling talks about her work and the emotional process and sometimes unpredictable nature of printmaking.

Do you have a favourite color or color palette? 
Teal and Purple.

Do you have a favourite artist?
Robert Rauschenberg 

Explain your work in up to 40 words.
Transferring the images of my primitive emotions that pop up in my mind but no words in any language can describe them for me. 

How do you know if an idea needs is working, needs revision or needs to be abandoned?
I go by my gut feeling.

How long have you been working in the medium used for your work for In The Details?
I’ve been a fine art printmaker since 1997. Working mainly in Monotype since 2006.

What do you like about this medium and what are its challenges?
I enjoy printmaking’s unpredictable nature. You don’t know the result till you print the image on to a paper no matter how hard you work on the plates. The moment of pulling is suspenseful but when the image turns out good, it makes me super happy.

Artist Interview: Patty Hudak

Patty Hudak in her Tokyo studio

Patty Hudak is an American painter currently studying mokuhanga. She has recently returned to the United States after living in Asia for over a decade. She describes her work as “concerned with expressing the space between my human anxiety and the wisdom I am trying to uncover from the natural forms around me.” Find more about Patty Hudak and her response to the theme “in the details” on her bio page.

Do you have a favourite color or color palette? 
Pure, dark black—the way shadow shapes create structural skeletons across a surface.

Do you have a favourite artist?
Some of my favorite artists are in this exhibition. I love the simple, yet powerful drips in Mia O’s work. I’m inspired by Arthur Huang‘s persistence as recorded in the conviction of his line. Yuko Kamei’s expansion of her dance practice into visual symbols reminds me that connection into the visual world can come through other forms of perception.

Explain your work in up to 40 words.
My work is trying to make sense between influences from the East and West; where does calligraphy meet abstract expressionism? How do natural forms and phenomena influence structures in art? Can we create images whose pattern becomes disordered, in a way, create the beauty and power of the natural world, without directly imitating it?

Describe your studio practice? Do you have any habits or rituals when producing art?
My best studio days include 30 minutes of observational drawing, formatting the drawings, clearing my mind, then painting from a place of emptiness. 

Could you talk about your creative process for responding to the theme of In The Details? Did your idea come to you right away? Did you have to experiment a lot? After spending twelve years in 3 of Asia’s largest cities, I am now living in a small rural community in the northern USA. For the past year, I have been communicating through illogical or non intellectual means as I immerse myself in the forest around me. I try to feel and sense my reaction, without words, what my body is emoting from being in these spaces. Sometimes, I stand and feel the sensations, without trying to capture it in any way. The shapes and colors in my work are directly derived from these somatic experiences.

Sometimes inspiration strikes and everything comes together just as imagined and other times inspiration is just a starting place. How close is your finished piece to what you first imagined?
Imagination works perfectly; with art, it’s not always that way. Materials create limitations. What I create is a collaboration between my intentions and how the materials respond. This is the most exciting part of the process— the dance between my mind and the materials that I am working on. 

Artist Interview: Yoshiyuki Horikoshi

Yoshiyuki Horikoshi is a painter based in Gunma, Japan. His work is mainly with oil paint. You can find out more about him on his bio page.

Do you have favorite color or color palette?
I like all colors. 

What music/album are you currently listening to? 
Kaho Nakamura AINOU. 

Describe your studio practice? Do you have any habits or rituals when producing art? 
Play music.

Do you pursue any themes? If so, what?
Change, transformation, distortion. Freshness for myself. I can’t do the same thing. 

What do you like about your medium and what are its challenges?
I like oil paint. I like that it’s easy to mix. I want to draw a mixed state.

What would you like people to know about your work?
I hope everyone has fun. I wish I could convey the feeling that I was struggling to convey with this piece.

Artist Interview: Deanna Gabiga

Studio Mood: Above & Beyond’s We Are All We Need

Deanna Gabiga is an interdisciplinary artist working in metals, fiber, and photography. Most recently from the amazing islands of Hawai’i, she has returned to Japan with a greatly expanded collection of textile artwork.

Explain your work in up to 40 words:
My artwork revolves around textiles; the creation of, the deconstruction of, the transformation of, and recreation of entirely new textiles. From a single line of fibers and/or metals, I create beautiful textiles while telling a story. These stories are of personal experiences or something I have witnessed in my travels. These textiles I stitch together and then examined more closely, often with macro photography which in turn provides material to create more textiles in yet another form.

What do you like about working with textiles and what are its challenges?
A single thread becomes another and another and in its infinity and multiplicity a story comes together. Combining these infinite threads creates more colors and the palette in which I explore becomes larger. Endangered Oceans is a piece in which I explore color. Blues; warm tropical blues to the deeper and darker ocean blues. I have spent my life not likeing the color blue, yet when I moved to Hawai’i, blue became a fascination for me. I felt like I saw the color blue for the first time and much of my work most recently has been around the color blue, its various facets, including what it represents.

What inspired you to create Endangered Oceans?
My life and travels as an adult have been surrounded by ocean and each place I go it is common to see ghost netting washing ashore and entangling with wildlife. It is ubiquitous. Destroying so much more than the fish it was originally meant to capture. Endangered Oceans represents the gorgeous blues I have encountered, the bright pops of corals, and the sparkling flashes of fish. You can see the ghost netting floating in the layers of ocean waters, hiding under it’s gorgeous waves.

Which artist has most inspired you?
Moving from jewelry design into wire crochet sculptural pieces has been the right path for me. Inspired by the crochet installation works of Arline Fisch I saw in a magazine article, I immediately started to learn how to crochet. Funny enough, it turns out a majority of her work is simply using a crochet hook to pull simple loops of the wire through other loops on a previous row. Yes, this is crochet but I had in my mind from the poor picture quality that the complete stitches and patterns were used as if one was making a scarf or hat. In this way I accidentally created my own style of wire crochet work. I did meet Arline a couple of times when I was living in San Diego, CA. and found her to be the consumate teacher. Peppering me with questions about my work and giving me vital advice regarding healthy long-term care of my hands & wrists to just giving me great sources for materials completely unprompted.

What additional activities will you be providing during In The Details?
On, Tuesday, Jan 30, from 1:00 – 3:00PM, I will be providing a small fiber demonstration/workshop on the technique I used to create Endangered Oceans. Please sign up in advance at studio deanna (at) me (dot) com. There are only a total of (4) spots available. The workshop will be ¥3,000/person and will include all materials necessary to create a small work of art.

studiodeanna.com