12
Jul
2005
"Some people think that art should shock, provoke strong emotion, but I don't do that," said Rock Island artist Akiko Koiso. "In art, I want something that I enjoy, that I find relaxing, and that brings me peace. My art does provoke emotion, but I want it to speak softly."
The artist herself is soft-spoken. Petite and pretty, with smiling eyes and a smooth complexion, Akiko reminds me of the American stereotype of a Japanese woman. Her facial features are in perfect proportion to each other, and she appears to be ageless, although she has a 10-year-old grandson. She has the demure, gracious manner of most Asian women I have met over the years, but 30 years in the United States have helped her to open up and speak her mind about herself and her art.
Koiso is best known for her ceramic art, which most Quad Cities artists and patrons of the arts would agree is of museum quality. Her work is as refined and as perfect as one would expect from a culture that strives to attain refinement and perfection. And its sophistication is unmistakable. Akiko's neutral-colored vessels, with their slick, fissured-looking glazes and dramatic black accouterments, are epitomes of grace and simplicity.
I'm always amazed at the exquisite way she perfectly wraps string around the thin dowel she uses as decoration for many of her tall, cylindrical vessels. She makes mundane materials, such as wood and clay, appear otherworldly and delicate, as in a Japanese painting. In the artist's own words, "I have a certain style that nobody can really copy."
Born in Osaka City, Japan, Akiko spent her formative years at school studying drawing, watercolors, acrylics, and ceramics, among other subjects, just like every other child in the Japanese school system. She was withdrawn as a child, and she found solace in her art. "I was so introverted and shy that I didn't want to talk to anybody," she said, "and I would just draw, draw, draw."
At age 19, Akiko's father took a job on the small island of Okinawa, but Akiko and her sister did not wish to live in provincial surroundings, so they stayed on together in Osaka. In the summers, however, she would visit her parents on the island, and she grew to enjoy the quiet beach life. During one of these visits, Akiko met Dean Edmundson of Rock Island, Illinois, whom she married and accompanied to the States in 1974.
Rock Island was not exactly what she expected. In letters addressed to her now-former husband, his hometown was referred to as the City of Rock Island, and she envisioned a teeming metropolis like Osaka or Tokyo. Today, Rock Island is hardly a big city, but 30 years ago it amounted to a small town. "I thought I had arrived in a village!" Koiso said. "But the people would ask me: 'Do you have color television [in Japan]? Do you have cars or do you drive rickshaws?'"
Akiko adapted to life as a mother and housewife, and she managed to squeeze in art classes at the Black Hawk College in Moline in her spare time. It was here that she and her professor, Phillip Johnson, discovered her great artistic talent in any medium she attempted, from drawing to ceramics. So impressed was the Black Hawk faculty that they awarded Akiko a full scholarship to the college.
"This was very hard," said Akiko. "That [the scholarship] meant that I had to go to school full-time, but I had to look after my children as well." Despite the demands of motherhood, she managed to complete her bachelor of art.
While studying under Johnson, Akiko was especially drawn to ceramics. "I was terrible at the wheel," she said. "I'm much better at slab work, constructing pieces." Today, Koiso is known primarily as a ceramicist, although this narrow categorization of her artistic ability bothers her.
"I'm getting an anxious feeling," she said. "I don't want to be stuck doing one thing. I want to just float [from medium to medium] - go back to painting." She is also enthused by other media. "I combine contemporary shape with an Eastern architectural design or textile design. My style is in everything from tying a knot [Japanese style] to the architecture. These small elements are everywhere in Japan, and I want to show that before it's lost. The designs are simple, and that's what I'm looking for." Akiko said she would like to incorporate these simple graphic designs from her native Japan into two-dimensional media such as textiles and paintings to give them an oriental flavor.
Akiko said she worries that she might alienate her regular clientele by producing something new and two-dimensional, but she is eager to try different things. "I would lose interest if I couldn't do that," she said. In an effort to give herself the artistic freedom that she craves, Akiko has a day job as senior graphic designer at Black Hawk College. Her job often requires that she work overtime, which eats into her creative time, but she is secure knowing that she has a steady income and does not have to rely upon the patronage of her clients to earn a living.
For her current show at the MidCoast Gallery West in downtown Rock Island, Akiko began experimenting with different glazes. She tested glazes on tile after tile, until she tried glazing a piece for the show. She was very pleased with the results, but found that the particular "stoneware" glaze, although effective on a two-dimensional tile, tended to flake off of her three-dimensional vertical pieces. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't," she said.
Determined to show her "two-dimensional" side, Koiso has installed two different wall series - Wall of Fame and Hagire - in the MidCoast exhibit. The former, I believe, is what she produced as a result of her experimentation with the stoneware glazes. The five mounted, framed tiles have a refreshing roughness, unlike her usual, sleek-looking vessels.
I loved the depth and texture the stoneware gives to the tiles. I wanted to run my fingers over them and to lay my face against them and absorb their pebbly coolness. And she gives character to her simple color choices (blacks, whites, and beiges) by adding the occasional splash of red or yellow.
The nine wall pieces featured in Hagire are assertively elegant. The tiles' embellishments are sweeping black arcs made of wood - I think - that cross through the squares like check marks or exclamation points. Superimposed on the black are shapes in muted colors such as soft powder blue and glowing burnt orange.
Almost in opposition to the raised bumps of her Wall of Fame series, the Hagire series is textured with incisions, crosshatching, and a variety of grooves and striations. The tiles make a strong statement about their creator, who is direct and forthright, despite her admitted shyness.
Not to be overlooked at the MidCoast exhibit are Katie Kiley's stunning graphite drawings, oils, and intaglio prints. Kiley is as much a perfectionist as Akiko, down to every last smudge of pencil.
Her detailed figurative drawings are impressive. When observing them up-close I thought, "How can she possibly know that these scratches and squiggles will look like crinkly fabric when seen from afar, or that the faintest shading will breath life into a woman's face?"
This exhibit is not to be missed. Integrity is the word that best describes the overall feeling of this show. Passion, skill, and patience are at work here, too, but most of all, Katie Kiley and Akiko Koiso are obviously true to themselves through their artwork.
The artist herself is soft-spoken. Petite and pretty, with smiling eyes and a smooth complexion, Akiko reminds me of the American stereotype of a Japanese woman. Her facial features are in perfect proportion to each other, and she appears to be ageless, although she has a 10-year-old grandson. She has the demure, gracious manner of most Asian women I have met over the years, but 30 years in the United States have helped her to open up and speak her mind about herself and her art.
Koiso is best known for her ceramic art, which most Quad Cities artists and patrons of the arts would agree is of museum quality. Her work is as refined and as perfect as one would expect from a culture that strives to attain refinement and perfection. And its sophistication is unmistakable. Akiko's neutral-colored vessels, with their slick, fissured-looking glazes and dramatic black accouterments, are epitomes of grace and simplicity.
I'm always amazed at the exquisite way she perfectly wraps string around the thin dowel she uses as decoration for many of her tall, cylindrical vessels. She makes mundane materials, such as wood and clay, appear otherworldly and delicate, as in a Japanese painting. In the artist's own words, "I have a certain style that nobody can really copy."
Born in Osaka City, Japan, Akiko spent her formative years at school studying drawing, watercolors, acrylics, and ceramics, among other subjects, just like every other child in the Japanese school system. She was withdrawn as a child, and she found solace in her art. "I was so introverted and shy that I didn't want to talk to anybody," she said, "and I would just draw, draw, draw."
At age 19, Akiko's father took a job on the small island of Okinawa, but Akiko and her sister did not wish to live in provincial surroundings, so they stayed on together in Osaka. In the summers, however, she would visit her parents on the island, and she grew to enjoy the quiet beach life. During one of these visits, Akiko met Dean Edmundson of Rock Island, Illinois, whom she married and accompanied to the States in 1974.
Rock Island was not exactly what she expected. In letters addressed to her now-former husband, his hometown was referred to as the City of Rock Island, and she envisioned a teeming metropolis like Osaka or Tokyo. Today, Rock Island is hardly a big city, but 30 years ago it amounted to a small town. "I thought I had arrived in a village!" Koiso said. "But the people would ask me: 'Do you have color television [in Japan]? Do you have cars or do you drive rickshaws?'"
Akiko adapted to life as a mother and housewife, and she managed to squeeze in art classes at the Black Hawk College in Moline in her spare time. It was here that she and her professor, Phillip Johnson, discovered her great artistic talent in any medium she attempted, from drawing to ceramics. So impressed was the Black Hawk faculty that they awarded Akiko a full scholarship to the college.
"This was very hard," said Akiko. "That [the scholarship] meant that I had to go to school full-time, but I had to look after my children as well." Despite the demands of motherhood, she managed to complete her bachelor of art.
While studying under Johnson, Akiko was especially drawn to ceramics. "I was terrible at the wheel," she said. "I'm much better at slab work, constructing pieces." Today, Koiso is known primarily as a ceramicist, although this narrow categorization of her artistic ability bothers her.
"I'm getting an anxious feeling," she said. "I don't want to be stuck doing one thing. I want to just float [from medium to medium] - go back to painting." She is also enthused by other media. "I combine contemporary shape with an Eastern architectural design or textile design. My style is in everything from tying a knot [Japanese style] to the architecture. These small elements are everywhere in Japan, and I want to show that before it's lost. The designs are simple, and that's what I'm looking for." Akiko said she would like to incorporate these simple graphic designs from her native Japan into two-dimensional media such as textiles and paintings to give them an oriental flavor.
Akiko said she worries that she might alienate her regular clientele by producing something new and two-dimensional, but she is eager to try different things. "I would lose interest if I couldn't do that," she said. In an effort to give herself the artistic freedom that she craves, Akiko has a day job as senior graphic designer at Black Hawk College. Her job often requires that she work overtime, which eats into her creative time, but she is secure knowing that she has a steady income and does not have to rely upon the patronage of her clients to earn a living.
For her current show at the MidCoast Gallery West in downtown Rock Island, Akiko began experimenting with different glazes. She tested glazes on tile after tile, until she tried glazing a piece for the show. She was very pleased with the results, but found that the particular "stoneware" glaze, although effective on a two-dimensional tile, tended to flake off of her three-dimensional vertical pieces. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't," she said.
Determined to show her "two-dimensional" side, Koiso has installed two different wall series - Wall of Fame and Hagire - in the MidCoast exhibit. The former, I believe, is what she produced as a result of her experimentation with the stoneware glazes. The five mounted, framed tiles have a refreshing roughness, unlike her usual, sleek-looking vessels.
I loved the depth and texture the stoneware gives to the tiles. I wanted to run my fingers over them and to lay my face against them and absorb their pebbly coolness. And she gives character to her simple color choices (blacks, whites, and beiges) by adding the occasional splash of red or yellow.
The nine wall pieces featured in Hagire are assertively elegant. The tiles' embellishments are sweeping black arcs made of wood - I think - that cross through the squares like check marks or exclamation points. Superimposed on the black are shapes in muted colors such as soft powder blue and glowing burnt orange.
Almost in opposition to the raised bumps of her Wall of Fame series, the Hagire series is textured with incisions, crosshatching, and a variety of grooves and striations. The tiles make a strong statement about their creator, who is direct and forthright, despite her admitted shyness.
Not to be overlooked at the MidCoast exhibit are Katie Kiley's stunning graphite drawings, oils, and intaglio prints. Kiley is as much a perfectionist as Akiko, down to every last smudge of pencil.
Her detailed figurative drawings are impressive. When observing them up-close I thought, "How can she possibly know that these scratches and squiggles will look like crinkly fabric when seen from afar, or that the faintest shading will breath life into a woman's face?"
This exhibit is not to be missed. Integrity is the word that best describes the overall feeling of this show. Passion, skill, and patience are at work here, too, but most of all, Katie Kiley and Akiko Koiso are obviously true to themselves through their artwork.
