Monday
Artist Update: Etsuko Ichikawa at BAM
Seattle-based artist Etsuko Ichikawa seems to be showing everywhere at once these days. Last year ended for her with two shows at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair and the opening of her solo exhibit Traces of the Molten State at the Bellevue Arts Museum. This winter has also included exhibitions in Washington D.C., Chicago, and another Seattle showing at Davidson Galleries. Ichikawa will start out the spring with an exhibition in Los Angeles and a feature on the cover of GLASS magazine. Since I first wrote about Ichikawa’s work in May 2009 she has certainly been busy and judging by the amount of work that she is showing it is safe to assume that her 2009 will only get busier.
I had the opportunity to meet Ichikawa shortly after I first stumbled upon her work at Davidson galleries last summer and she invited me to come watch her work in her studio. I quickly saw that the images she created involved a lot more thought and artistic planning than I had originally imagined. I pictured it to be something like sketching on big sheets of paper with hot glass, but it turns out that it’s not quite that easy. Ichikawa was friendly and talkative in between set ups, but as soon as she got to work she was mostly silent with obvious concentration. The process looks something like this: Ichikawa pulls out the molten glass and rolls and shapes it until the desired shape is created. Then she carries it over to a heavy sheet of paper and either drops, drags, or twirls the glass over the surface to get the image that she wants. Flames flare up from the paper as she studies to see if more needs to be done. When she ascertains that it is complete her assistant runs over with a spray bottle in order to put out the still crackling image before it burns through the canvas. The now hardened pieces of glass are then swept away and broken to fit into a dump bucket. The process is absolutely mesmerizing to watch and it was easy to see why Ichikawa often does live demonstrations or videos of her process in conjunction with her exhibits. Continue…
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no responses - Posted 02.27.09
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no responses - Posted 10.08.08
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1 response - Posted 06.06.08
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4 responses - Posted 06.05.08
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no responses - Posted 05.14.08
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11 responses - Posted 05.05.08
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2 responses - Posted 04.29.08
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3 responses - Posted 04.10.08
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2 responses - Posted 02.29.08
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1 response - Posted 02.19.08
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2 responses - Posted 02.05.08
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11 responses - Posted 01.07.08
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