Seaweed pressings, wrapped and ready to leave the studio Recently, I read Pablo Helguera's writing, A Dissonant Pedagogy, about artistic knowledge, uncertainty, and what happens when we allow ourselves to not know. It stayed with me. Pablo writes about uncertainty as a space where learning can happen. I found myself thinking about a different kind of uncertainty: what happens before someone even begins? What happens when a person hears the word making and immediately thinks, I don't do that....

I Didn't Dream of Becoming an Artist I did dream of becoming an artist. When I moved to Monterey, California, I thought I was coming to the United States to become an artist. I didn't have a career plan. I wasn't thinking about what job I would have, how much money I would make, or what my professional life would look like. I simply wanted to make things. Fukuoka / Kyoto, Japan I wanted to explore art. I wanted to see what would happen. The image of my dream became clearer as I took the paths...

What Counts as a Canvas? When people learn that I am an artist, one of the first questions I often hear is: “Do you paint?” It is a simple question, but I have come to think there is a much bigger question hidden inside it: What do we recognize as art? I understand why people ask. Painting is one of the most familiar images of what an artist does. A canvas, a surface, colors, marks, and an image that can be displayed and viewed. It is a language many people already know. My answer is yes,...