Renowned artist Nishiki Sugawara-Beda unveils her latest masterpiece, the ethereal Kotodama Converse. Crafted delicately from lightweight paper and adorned with intricate script, this sculptural installation mesmerizes with its profound simplicity. Accompanied by petite sumi paintings on wood. In the presence of the Kotodama Converse, spectators are beckoned to engage in an intimate dialogue with the artwork itself. Their emotions, thoughts, and unspoken words converge, intertwining with Sugawara-Beda's silent narrative. Each observer becomes an active participant, transforming the act of viewing into a profound communion. Hailing from a lineage steeped in both Japanese and American heritage, Nishiki Sugawara-Beda is a luminary in the realm of visual artistry. Her oeuvre, spanning the realms of painting and installation, serves as a bridge between cultures, inviting contemplation on themes of identity, language, and spirituality imbued with the essence of Zen Buddhism. Drawing inspiration from her ancestral roots, Sugawara-Beda embarks on a journey of exploration, delving into the rich tapestry of Japanese culture. Through her artistic endeavors, she transcends temporal boundaries, seamlessly weaving ancient techniques such as  Sumi ink and Kakejiku landscapes with contemporary abstract expressions. In this harmonious fusion, East meets West, tradition intersects with innovation, and the universal language of art speaks to the collective human experience.

artist face

Nishiki Sugawara

Guest Artist

The themes of transforming human relations, engaging community, and examining boundaries excite me a great deal, and for that, I am exhibiting my sculptural installation work, Kotodama Converse along with small paintings. I would like to note that Kotodama Converse will transform the audience to active participants and allow them not only to reflect their emotional stage but also to examine the relationship of the boundaries between their internal selves and public selves. This exhibition consists of a one large sculptural installation in the middle and small paintings on the walls. Audience is invited to walk under—in some cases, lay down—and around the installation. The paintings are 6"×12" on wood panels.
There is a shrine called Sanjusangendo in Kyoto, Japan, where there are one thousand and one statues situated in a line, side by side. Growing up in Japan, we were encouraged to find one that captures our character and spirit among these statutes. Inspired by this story, I am presenting various paintings for the gallery visitors to find one that sparks to their inner energy. With this, I hope to offer a meditative space with visuals that reminds the visitors to stop and engage with their personal truth. Since Kotodama Converse is a floating sculpture, the building of a hanging structure on the ceiling is necessary.
As an artist and individual whose foundation and inspiration come from tracing back to the origins, I aim to present nonphysical and transcendent worlds by incorporating the traditional spiritual approaches. With my exhibition, I would like to invite the audience to view and feel this unfamiliar yet relatable phenomena at both intellectual and visceral levels and to explore their own spiritual spaces.

Bio:

 

Nishiki Sugawara-Beda is a Japanese-American visual artist based in painting and installation, and actively exhibits her work in solo and group exhibitions and offers lectures nationally and internationally. Connecting across space and time, she experiments in ancient Japanese materials and techniques including Sumi ink, Kakejiku landscapes, and rice paper, to merge them with abstract and expressive forms familiar to the modern Western aesthetic.

 

Exhibition venues include the Spartanburg Art Museum (SC), Morris Graves Museum of Art (CA), Dennos Museum (MI), Amos Eno Gallery (NY), and Cris Worley Fine Arts (TX). Publications include New American Paintings, AEQAI, Athenaeum Review, London Post, Art Spiel, and WhiteHot. Awards including a Seed Grant, Diversity Fellowship, International Enhancement Grant, Idaho Arts Fellowship, Sam Taylor Fellowship, Tusen Takk Foundation residency, and Dallas Museum of Art Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Fund have supported her artistic research. Her works are in private and public collections including the Dallas Museum of Art. Currently, Sugawara-Beda is an Associate Professor of Art at Southern Methodist University.

 

Artist Statement: 

 

I was born and raised in Japan, where all schoolchildren learn calligraphy. Calligraphy has become an

entrance point to understanding my own culture as it allows me to recognize the existence of underlying meanings in all forms—language, images, even the mundane interactions of being. This

craft provides the foundation and inspiration for my practice.

 

Kotodama Converse, a light-weight sculptural installation, has its physical presence in a gallery, but the viewer is the one who completes the work. As the viewer enters and interacts with the installation, they transform themselves to active participants and contribute psychological and emotional contents to the work. In the traditional format of Japanese calligraphy, seals containing characters—the words and phrases—accompany calligraphy work. Because the characters that comprise the seals are being presented without their calligraphic context, the installation provides a blank canvas that serves as an invitation for the viewer to complete the work, bringing their own emotional state, words, and phrases both physically and metaphorically. The act of viewing becomes the act of participation. Furthermore, I hope that they will be encouraged to reflect and reexamine their own boundaries of internal and external selves.

 

KuroKuroShiro, meaning black-black-white in Japanese, offers spaces where viewers can privately immerse themselves in their own psychological and spiritual world. They are painted with Sumi—an ink traditionally used in East Asia made of soot and animal glue—that offers a wide range of tones and depths in black. With the subtle shifts of blacks, the spiritual and imaginative worlds emerge. The particles in soot—its main ingredient—carry a spirit that can be absorbed by the maker, viewer, or materials. If the viewer is open to the spirit, a space is initiated where the collective spirit freely travels around, bringing colors into viewers’ eyes. While the paintings are not expressing something by themselves, they provoke viewers’ personal agendas and provide a blank space for their spiritual content to fill up. Each work encourages intimate viewing, privately allowing the audience to be vulnerable and feel the subtleness and mystical realm of Sumi to face their inner truth. My ultimate hope is that viewers can walk away from my work with visual and mental frames for their spiritual world to linger, form, and exist.

 

To speak to the core of humanity, I seek connections among cultures both from the past and present and ground myself with the origins of various matters from my native and adopted cultures through my research. My recent works attempt to highlight an oft-forgotten engagement in contemporary society—a deeper connection with one’s own spirit. While Kotodama Converse and the paintings present a moment of this spiritual engagement, I hope viewers enjoy traveling through their own inner landscapes.