Gallery | Marie Cameron Studio

Have you been to Iwasawa Oriental Art yet? It’s a lovely gallery of fine Japanese art, furniture and design serving a very discerning clientele and celebrating their 35th anniversary this year! It’s located at 75 University Avenue in Los Gatos, California.

Kumikio Iwasawa Vadas, the gracious owner, exhibits work that reflects the changing seasons and is currently showing Water in Life an exhibit that runs until February 28th, 2018. How perfectly this parallels the current Waterlines exhibition at NUMU (where my pieces Stilla Maris and California Water Rites are currently showing) for which she is one of several generous sponsors! She is standing in front of a beautiful work of calligraphy by Kihachiro Nishiura – Sound of Water – Sumi Ink of Canvas. This skilled artist teaches calligraphy lessons at the gallery!

On display in front of the calligraphy are these amazing stone vessels by Ken Matsumoto, the one at the bottom is called Spillway Wash from 2015.

Ken Matsumoto – Grant Lake RipRap – Unidentified Stone – 2016

A painting from Masamichi Kotaki’s series, Neither a Point or a Line, work that echoes the gestural sweeps of calligraphy in Sumi Ink, mineral pigment and gold on hemp paper from 2006.

This beautiful Urushi or lacquerware green tea container is part of several vignettes of Toriawase in the gallery, the poetic art of arrangement, which is highly evolved throughout Japanese culture and maybe nowhere more so than in the Japanese tea ceremony in which the host can covey more than can be expressed in words with artful, thoughtful arrangements. The Chrysanthemum of autumn, depicted in gold is a symbol of longevity and follows the idea of Shitsurae, the practice of arranging decor to reflect the season or occasion. This piece is an example of Utsushi, where craftsmen look to employ and improve upon traditional imagery and methods, not to copy but to participate in an artistic dialogue that spans centuries.

Not only did I want to share this wonderful gallery with you but also share the exciting news that Kumiko Iwasawa Vadas has invited me to exhibit my triptych, Blooming Deadwood, here in the spring! We discussed it with a few friends over some lovely plum wine, cheese and crackers after my artist talk at Fade where the painting in currently on exhibit at Vargas Gallery. I am so honored to think of my work adding to the conversation of art and nature that envelops you when you enter this very special space!

While I was picking up work from the Pacific Art League’s Figures and Faces show, which just wrapped up, I remembered that Pace was only minutes away and I was curious if the Pace Art + Technology exhibit with teamLab was still on. As luck would have it the show runs until July and I made it under the wire of their Memorial Day Weekend hours restrictions. What a show of digital and light based work!

This one seemed like a cosmic, electronic, floating sugar cube with it’s sparkling, ever-changing light display.

There were two of these floral digital displays which would grow and evolve and shed their petals. These ladies were not touching the screen but checking to see it their proximity would alter the events on the screen – it’s hard to tell whether this is so of is coincidental. It was beautifully ethereal!

In this room full of digital displays scored to music we were all mesmerized by the unfolding imagery.

In this installation of hanging lights, lined with mirror at the periphery, color shimmered and pulsated and we were offered glimpsed of ourselves and others though the glowing, twinkling curtain. It felt like an Indian wedding place to me and I had a craving for kulfi.

This digital piece was like a perpetual wave tank designed by Hokusai.

This was such an engaging piece, comprised of a number of digital panels it told the story of a man who chopped down a tree an released something terrible. The traditional imagery from the fable kept morphing and dissolving before out eyes. Utterly fascinating!