The Queue: Yuko Nishikawa
The Queue: Yuko Nishikawa
The Queue: Yuko Nishikawa
Yuko Nishikawa. Photo by Laura Findley.
Yuko Nishikawa sculpts gardens of wonder.
With a plethora of craft materials in her arsenal, Yuko Nishikawa creates curious, whimsical objects and installations that can shift our understanding of the spaces we enter. The Japan-born, Brooklyn-based sculptor works with clay, paper pulp, wire, fabric, and recycled glasses lenses to fashion mobiles, lighting, and sculpture that she installs—often in large groups—in galleries, stores, restaurants, and living spaces. Blobby and Seussian and a little abstract, Nishikawa’s work hints at the shapes of plants, animals, body parts, and alien life. She currently works out of a studio called Forest in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, named to reflect the regenerative use of building materials and the sense of wonder that arises from creation. Paola Singer wrote about Nishikawa’s Squish bench, made in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic to address the physical isolation she felt, in “A Good Place to Sit”—which features a number of handcrafted benches—in the Summer 2024 issue of American Craft.
Nishikawa’s Bowerbird Sconce YWC4, 2024, ceramics and electrical components, 26 x 14.5 x 8.5 in. Photo by Yuko Nishikawa.
How do you describe your work or practice in 50 words or less?
I create transformative, site-specific installed environments with colorful, textural, lively forms. I make sculptures, lighting, mobiles, and paintings using a variety of mediums (including clay, wire, and fabrics) and repurposed materials like paper pulp and used eyewear lenses.
Tell us about a handcrafted environment you’ve been to that has inspired you.
On my trips to Japan the past few years, I visited some kominkas, residences built with traditional architectural elements such as wooden beams, clay partitions, and straw roofs. Those homes have such warmth of materials, softness of light and shadows, and calm flowing sense of space.
Much of your work (including the Squish bench we featured in the Summer 2024 issue of American Craft) is presented as a group or series of objects. Why do you make work this way?
A group of objects pulls and contracts space and adds additional elements that change the way we experience them and space.
Your work has an organic feel and embraces and reframes decay and rot in terms of regeneration. Tell us about the processes in nature that inspire your work.
I want to find joy and beauty in changes that occur as time passes. I’m interested in the transformation of physical properties such as the form, color, strength, and texture of objects, our environment, and our bodies and how that relates to our changing ideas about them as we age.
You See a Sheep, 2018, ceramics and electrical components, 15 x 9 x 5 ft.
Photo by Cary Whittier.
Time Vessels, 2017, ceramics, various dimensions. Photo by Yuko Nishikawa.
What are you working on right now?
I’m working on a series of ceramic and outdoor sculptures, large paintings, and hanging paper pulp sculptures and installations. I’m also preparing for my next solo exhibitions: one at Pollock Gallery at SMU in Dallas this fall and an exhibition tour in Japan next year.
Which craft artists, exhibitions, or projects do you think the world should know about, and why? Whose work do you love?
A collection of writings by Yanagi Sōetsu, who pioneered the Mingei Japanese folk crafts movement in the 1920s, made me rethink the way I interact with objects in my daily life and the work I want to produce. Some books are available in English. I’ve mostly read them in Japanese.
Mossy Mossy, 2024, paper pulp and wire, various dimensions. Photo by Yuko Nishikawa.
Cloud, 2024, paper pulp and steel wire. Photo by Yuko Nishikawa.
ADVERTISEMENT
