In so many ways, my art pieces are ARTifacts of not just my existence, but our existence. They are a testament to and
fragments from a recipe my maternal grandma used in the 1940s that I found in her attic or using excerpts from the racist ads of the magazines my mom and dad certainly grew up looking at, I am merely remembering all the parts of me, of us, and remixing them on my terms, articulating how I truly see myself, see us. But more literally, I have boxes on boxes of just cut material, of print media that resonates with me, is absurd to me, pisses me off or makes me feel some type of way. I source my print media from everywhere; from the crusty boxes in my parents’ garage, from used book stores in the countryside of Japan, ads from the Sunday paper, discards that residents put outside their house, chopstick wrappers from the joint down the street. No thoughts or ego. I just go. This doesn’t mean I pull things out of my ass in a quickness, because typically every piece takes me over five hours. I like the patterns, fractals and scenes that go unseen. I like window reflections - they’re like portals into the infinite or parallel realities and selves. I’ve always thought of my vision as quiet, appreciative of all textures. They are all about San Francisco. Frisco is in every piece.
Art Reflecting History
celebration of generations; the unsung songs, the unsaid truths, the unheard screams, the unexpressed poetry of all the generations before me. Every single piece of print media I use, its original publication, and every placement of each element, is incredibly intentional. Similar to the shokunin or craftsman or masters I came across in Japan, nothing is done without mindfulness. In late-stage capitalism, it’s almost like our attention has been hijacked, to distract us from being present in each miraculous moment, in these incredible vessels, in this wild, unexplainably infinite existence. I learned so much from living in Japan. There were so many negative spaces. I learned about the beauty in the shadows, the silence, in the unnamed, in the space of nothingness where everything can be born. Collage is basically like mixing music. Sampling from an endless library of print media and ephemera. Synthesizing the sounds of each ancestor, in each decade, in each moment. Whether cutting tiny
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