Kay Sekimachi: Geometries at BAMPFA
Fri, Oct 8, 1pm – Kay Sekimachi:Geometries – J-Sei group tour
Join us for a group visit to see “Kay Sekimachi: Geometries” exhibit at BAMPFA, the UC Berkeley Pacific Film Archive Museum. We will meet at BAMPFA, 2155 Center Street (at Oxford St), easily accessible by BART. The group ticket price is $8 Please RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with “Kay Sekimachi tour” in the subject line.
“Kay Sekimachi: Geometries” includes more than fifty objects that highlight the artist’s material and formal innovations across her career. First recognized for her woven monofilament sculptures, made between 1964 and 1974, Sekimachi has since used linear, pliable elements—monofilament, thread, and paper, among other materials—to create experimental objects that fold together art and craft, found and made, and Japanese and American artistic traditions.
Born in San Francisco and growing up in Berkeley, Kay Sekimachi studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from 1946 to 1949. In 1949 she took up weaving on the loom and became so adept at the labor-intensive process that she is often referred to as a “weaver’s weaver.” Today, almost fifty years after she began to work in fiber, Sekimachi is recognized as a pioneer in resurrecting it as a medium of artistic expression.
Sekimachi uses the loom to construct three-dimensional sculptural forms. In the early 1970s she used nylon monofilament to create hanging quadruple tubular woven forms to explore ideas of space, transparency, and movement. Inspired by her ancestral homeland of Japan, Sekimachi repeatedly returns to that ancient culture for ideas.
“Sekimachi eschews color in order to reinforce the sculptural qualities of her forms and emphasize the natural properties of her chosen materials. Enamored with antique Japanese paper, she has created a series of standing geometric postlike forms that suggest ancient totemic figures.” –Smithsonian American Art Museum
Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series, including Summer of the Big Bachi, which was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and one of Chicago Tribune’s Ten Best Mysteries and Thrillers; Gasa Gasa Girl; Snakeskin Shamisen; and Hiroshima Boy. She is also the author of the LA-based Ellie Rush mysteries. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo newspaper, she has co-written non-fiction books like Life after Manzanar and the award-winning Terminal Island: Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor.
His granddaughter Kimi Hill has consulted on numerous books and exhibitions about her grandfather, including a recent retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. As family historian Hill also edited the book Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment which tells the story of the Obata family, one of the thousands of Japanese-Americans stripped of their homes and livelihoods and incarcerated during WWII.