The Seattle Japanese Garden opened to the public in June of 1960. Today, the garden is one of the most highly regarded Japanese-style gardens in North America and is visited by over 125,000 visitors from around the world annually.
In a rapidly growing city, the garden has become a place where one can take a moment to appreciate nature, reconnect with loved ones, heal, dream and celebrate ordinary elements in life. Every day hundreds of people walk the garden paths, each on their own unique journey.
Seeing | Seeds | Stories features 5 artists who portray the garden with their stories in celebration of the 60th anniversary. They have each created their own narrative of the space, expressing through their individual mediums the unseen moments that make a visit to the garden special.
Artists in Exhibit: Kathleen Ashby Atkins, Kathy Hattori, Michelle Kumata, Elijah Pasco, Markel Uriu
The exhibit will be virtually displayed here from August 1st - August 31st, 2020.
Kathleen Ashby Atkins
Kathleen Ashby Atkins makes photographs of many subjects, especially wildlife, botanical life and architecture. “When I take photographs in a garden, I absorb the aesthetic of artists who work directly with plants, soil, rocks, water, and weather and who bring with them in their endeavors other human crafts. When I’m in a garden, I’m not the first or only artist in a landscape: I walk on a path wrestled out of flux by a gardener.”
Kathy Hattori
Kathy Hattori is a textile artist and founder of Botanical Colors (botanicalcolors.com), a natural dye company that provides sustainably-sourced materials to artisans and the fashion and textile industry. “Natural colors are a beautiful antidote to the specter of climate change. Each piece I make questions issues of air, water and soil use: How does this textile affect these fundamental requirements for life?"
* Her artwork will be displayed at the Elisabeth C. Miller Library in 2021.
Michelle Kumata
Michelle Kumata is a graphic artist who works in a variety of media (michellekumata.com). For this exhibit she has created paintings that focus on stories of Nikkei—people of Japanese descent living outside of Japan. Specifically, her work will celebrate the Seattle Japanese Garden and our local Nikkei community of 1960.
Elijah Pasco
Elijah Pasco is an illustrator, cartoonist, and columnist whose work is featured in his column The Campus Sketcher in the University of Washington’s newspaper The Daily (elijahnpasco.com) . For this exhibit, he has filled an accordion style sketchbook with moments that capture the feelings of calm, slowness, and peace drawn on location throughout the garden that flow from one sketch to the next.
Markel Uriu
Markel Uriu is an interdisciplinary artist (markeluriu.com). Her work explores impermanence, maintenance and the unseen. Drawing from her Japanese and Irish-American heritage, she is particularly interested in liminal (transitional) spaces and explores these concepts through research, ephemeral botanical narratives, installations and two-dimensional work.
*The exhibit is scheduled to be displayed both at the Seattle Japanese Garden and the Elisabeth C. Miller Library in 2021. Please check back for more details.