Artist Of The Week: Kumi Yamashita: Talented And Versatile Artist

Posted: 7/25/2012

We have featured many artists on our blog, earlier who use different medium to showcase their art. Kumi Yamashita is one such artist who uses anything under the sun, turning it into amazing art. She uses everything from nails to aluminum sheets, fabrics to paper, she also creates art using pencil tracing over different objects like credit cards.

Kumi Yamashita was born in Japan and moved to US as a high-school exchange student. Kumi studied in the US and UK. Her artwork is mesmerizing, she creates beautiful silhouttes by using everyday objects and just light. She uses the interplay of light and shadow to create stunning art.

One of her initial work 'Origami', which unlike it's name is just made using creased Japanese paper which is placed in such a way that when light falls on it, it produces the shadow of a human face.

Intricacy of her creation is so complex that it is difficult to comprehend how each of her installation is created. This is well illustrated in 'City View' installation where she creates a silhouette of a woman using light and and numbers. This installation is displayed in a 30-storey building in Osaka, Japan.

Kumi has won many awards and has showcased her work all around the world. She presently lives in Manhattan and works in her studio in Long Island City. Read along to know more about Kumi and her work:

1. You use lights and shadows, credit cards, nails and threads, denim and so many other things to create art. What inspires you to create varied forms of art? How do you go about designing your artwork?

I don't consciously choose to work with fabric or nails or other materials. Ideas come to me and I follow them. I try to figure out how to make whatever idea or image is in my head. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't.

2. What is it about light and shadow that attracts you so much?

I'm attracted to both light and shadow because, simply put, I think they are beautiful. In my work the object and the shadow that it casts are equally important. I love to see the presence of both solidness / weight of materials and the weightlessness / ungraspable aspect of light and shadow; to see permanence and ephemera sharing the same spaces, the same moments.

3. Creating portraits out of a white panel board, black sewing thread woven around brads is a very unique idea, how did you come about creating this form of portraits?

I was looking at my friend one evening in a room with very low lighting and in my vision I saw what looked like little dots - similar to a grainy photo. And that made me think of stars in the night sky and how humans have always connected the stars to make pictures. I realized you can make an endless series of images by re-connecting the dots in different ways.

4. Your work “WARP & WEFT” looks absolutely stunning. Just curious to know how you manage to remove only a part of the threads from the fabric to create these portraits? What tools do you use for accomplishing this?

A pair of very sharp small pointy scissors and a set of forceps (similar to tweezers) to remove the thread.

5. As an artist, I know this question would be difficult to answer for you, which of your works is most treasured by you?

I think one of my least appreciated works is my most treasured - Sunny Days and Starry Nights. It's a piece that seemed to come out of nowhere...I had never done any work like this before, but once the idea came to me I just had to make it and spent the next year doing so.

6. What has been the most satisfying compliment that you have received so far for your art?

Whenever someone thanks me for doing what I do, I feel very grateful.

7. What other artists do you look up to? If you could peek inside the studio/toolbox of any one other artist/craftsperson, whose would it be and why?

Alexander Calder, Erik Satie, and the great, animated filmmaker Yuri Norstein come to mind. I'd love to see Yuri Norstein's studio because his work is so beautiful...It would be wonderful to see the environment from which his work springs.

8. What are the leisure activities you enjoy when you are not working? What do you find most relaxing?

I love playing music with friends (which I don't get to do enough) and eating donuts (which I do too much).