Conflux: multiple elements come together. The Conflux series formed during a residency last summer. I was invited for two weeks to create prints with a master printer, Judith Baumann, at Crow’s Shadow Institute of Arts (CSIA) in Pendleton, OR. My plan was to have no plan, and I took minimum materials with me. I used several days of the residency to explore and adjust to the new environment. I am an artist and printmaker, so I relied on printing with someone that was sensational. Getting a suggestion to complete my idea, it was a conflux moment and I enjoyed it.
I also had support for printing monoprints from the Watershed Center for Fine Art Publishing and Research at Pacific Northwest College of Art’s MFA Print Media graduate program this past winter. It was also a unique experience and different from printing at CSIA.
These two totally different printing experiences were similar to the process of adjusting to a new environment like I had experienced when I came to the United States. My Japanese culture meets and adjusts to a new melting pot culture just as my attention to the traditional Japanese art forms meets and adjusts to a new contemporary art environment. Two elements come together; that is my focus in these artworks.
