[OPENING NOTES]
Welcome.
Thank you for joining us at today's program,
featuring Macha Suzuki, presented
as part of the Wignall Museum's Home Edition,
a series of curated artists talks,
workshops, and discussions featuring
artists and cultural workers.
My name is Rebecca Trawick.
I'm the director and curator of the Wignall Museum.
The Wignall Museum is a teaching museum an interdisciplinary art
space that introduces Chaffey College students, faculty,
staff, and community members to innovative contemporary art
objects and ideas.
By fostering critical thinking, visual literacy, discourse,
and empathy, the museum seeks to enhance
the intellectual, cultural life of our community.
We want to take a moment to recognize that we're situated
on the Rancho Cucamonga Campus, Chaffey College, which
resides on the traditional and unceded lands of the Tongva
people.
We offer our recognition and respect to the elders
both past, present, and future.
And hello.
My name is Roman Stollenwerk.
I'm assistant curator at the Wignall
Museum of Contemporary Art.
Please note, we are recording all sessions of Home Edition.
When possible, recordings are made available on our website.
Visit us at www.chaffey.edu/wignall
to access our full schedule of programs and available
recordings.
Announcements we'll post our email subscribers
and social media when new videos are available.
All recordings on our site include captions and audio
descriptions as options.
You can follow us on social media,
including Facebook and Instagram, @wignallmuseum.
We ask that you complete a brief survey after the session
at a tinyurl.com/wign allspring21visitorsurvey.
Thank you.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Andy Hadle.
I am the preparator at the museum.
I'll be assisting Rebecca and Roman in today's Zoom session.
In a moment, we'll have Macha Suzuki present for about a half
an hour or so, with the remaining time being available
for Q&A. Thank you.
Thanks, Andy.
Thanks, Roman.
Today, I have the great honor of introducing you
all to Macha Suzuki.
We're so glad to have him here today.
Macha was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1979.
He immigrated to Los Angeles in 1988.
He has an-- excuse me, an MFA from Claremont Graduate
University in sculpture and a BA in Studio Art with emphases
in painting and photography from Asuza Pacific University.
Suzuki has exhibited his work regularly for the past 12
years in museums and galleries, nationally and internationally.
He was represented by Stanley Gallery, Los Angeles,
for seven years, where he had two
solo shows and a two-person show,
until it closed its doors in 2013.
His other solo exhibitions include Wignall Museum
of Contemporary Art, Vincent Price Art Museum, Laguna Art
Museum, Gallery at Larra Tokyo, Kravetz Wehby
Gallery in New York City, Cypress Gallery, and Biola
University.
Suzuki has also taught art and design at various institutions
since 2005, and he is currently clinical assistant professor
at Loyola Marymount University.
He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
So please join me in giving Macha a warm virtual welcome.
Thank you, Rebecca and Roman and Andy.
And thank you guys for the years of support.
I'm honored to be included in this lineup of this lecture
series.
And, yeah, so I'm going way back in time.
This image you're seeing now is from my MFA thesis exhibition.
And it's really fun to see so many faces
and names that I recognize.
So thanks again.
So this first piece is from 2007.
It's called Fortunately.
Mixed media, 28 by 26 by 18 inches.
So my wife worked as a caretaker for this elderly woman
named Diana who was fighting Alzheimer's disease.
And we got to know her pretty well for the last couple
of years of her life.
And so my wife was there to help take care of her.
When she passed away, her family organized a celebration of life
at a restaurant.
And for the first time, we met people
who knew Diana and who had really amazing stories
about her.
People who were impacted by her in her life.
And it was just this really rich experience for us.
So they all told stories of how great
she was and all the accomplishments
and what she meant to them.
And I realized that she was so much more
than just this elderly woman who was slowly declining.
And we got to be blessed by all of the things
that we learned about her.
This piece is about that and about legacies
that we leave behind when we close chapters in life.
And as I'm growing older and deeper into my artist's career
and as my kids are growing older as well,
I'm thinking more about what my legacy might
be for my own work as an artist and also as just a human being.
What I want people to remember about me,
or what are those stories that they're going to tell.
So I titled this talk Bedtime Stories of Failure,
Macha Suzuki, Xs and Os.
One of the recurring themes in my work for the past decade
or so has been this idea of failure.
Not as something that is exclusively negative,
but rather as something to be celebrated.
As something that will make you wiser,
something that will help you to build character, something
that will help you to succeed.
This is called Minor Threat from 2008.
67 by 115 by 115 inches.
It's a slightly larger than life sheep
made of cheerleading pompoms.
And it's surrounded by colorful arrows that
are suspended from the ceiling.
There are two arrows that have pierced the sheep,
and instead of bleeding, the coat
of the sheep where the arrows have struck
is turning into the color of the arrow.
So the next moment when all the arrows have hit the sheep,
the idea is that instead of it bleeding out and dying,
it's going to turn into this really colorful, really
iconic beautiful being.
Full of color, full of life.
Weird.
So the arrows, they represent hardships in life,
including moments of failure, which seems to be unavoidable.
You often can't control those arrows, what comes your way.
But what you can control is the way in which
you respond to these arrows.
You can let these arrows make you bleed out
or knock you down.
Or you can also allow these arrows
to help you become a better version of yourself.
You can become wiser, right, through these experiences.
You can become more compassionate,
more understanding, et cetera.
And the scars become beauty marks
that make you more beautiful than you were before.
Here's a detailed shot of where the arrow strikes the sheep.
This piece is called Death and Rebirth from 2009.
It's a mixed media, life-sized dead body self-portrait.
So I'm about 5'9" on a good day, so that's about the size
of the sculpture.
This piece started with a conversation
I had with a friend whose wife had just
given birth to their first baby, first little boy.
And I asked him, I asked my buddy
what it was like to anticipate the arrival of this new life.
And I just had a lot of questions
like, what is it so exciting anticipating it?
And he said that, yes, it was very exciting.
But also at the same time, it was sad.
And he explained that he was simultaneously
excited for the arrival of the child,
but also sad to no longer be this carefree person who
had fewer responsibilities.
I mean, he liked being married with no kids.
He had to mourn the loss, right, of his old self.
And which I thought was really interesting,
and I loved his honesty.
And it resonated with me, and I said, I felt that when I got
married.
On one hand, I was really happy and excited to spend the rest
of my life with my wife.
But I also liked being single.
I like being not married.
And so this piece touches on that idea.
So there's a crack in the chest of the lying figure.
And if you look inside, you'll see two hands
trying to pry open the chest--
the cavity from the inside.
And there's also another face on the inside
if you look down into the opening.
And the face is trying to squeeze out.
And from the open mouth of the face on the inside,
the cords, the colorful cords, are coming out.
I wanted to portray the dead body
as this really beautiful form.
Because the things we leave behind when big changes occur,
sometimes you're leaving good and beautiful things.
And the body emerging from within is devoid of any color,
because even though it represents
new and perhaps better, it's still yet to be discovered.
It's still unknown.
Permission to Fail, 2010, steel wire, aluminum foil,
floral tape, yarn, inkjet transparencies.
90 by 116 by 20 inches.
So this piece comes out of an observation
I had from people in my life, including myself.
I realized that people around me were just settling in life--
settling for less than what they deserve or less
than what they want or less than what they're
capable of Because of fear.
Fear of failure.
So this piece is a call to you from the universe to fail.
Giving yourself permission to fail
will allow you to take bigger risks, which will help
you to reach bigger successes.
You can only understand the true meaning of success
when you are able to accept the possibilities of failure.
Here's a detail.
So the leaves are made out of inkjet transparencies
that I just printed on my inkjet printer.
In the right lighting, the leaves
will cast the color onto the wall.
So we've all heard of the saying,
if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
What happens if you don't succeed after that?
And then you try it again.
But then what happens if you still don't succeed?
I guess you try again, right.
And you keep going through this endless cycle
of trying and failing.
If you keep trying and missing and trying and missing,
eventually that repetition starts to hold value.
It starts to mean something.
This piece is called Nice Try from 2010.
MDF wooden dowels, enamel paint.
45 and 1/2 by 45 and 1/2 by 21 inches.
It recognizes that life is not always
about hitting the bullseye.
It's often about the effort and the desire to hit the bullseye.
And the things you gain from missing the bullseye.
It's about the journey rather than the destination.
So this is a target where none of the arrows
have hit the mark.
Instead, the arrows make this beautiful radial design.
As a target practice, it's a complete failure.
But as an object, it's perhaps more beautiful because
of the failure.
This is a piece called Blessings in the Skies.
See what I did there?
From 2010.
MDF, epoxy clay, enamel paint, lights.
5 and 1/2 by 43 by 21 inches.
So as you know, living in and around LA,
you've hit a lot of traffic.
And this piece started with--
it starts with a story.
My wife and I were stuck in traffic, in rush hour traffic,
trying to get out of LA.
We were on the 101 heading north.
We were trying to catch a concert in Santa Barbara.
And we were arguing about something.
And there was just a lot of tension in the car.
We were both irritated that we weren't moving.
And off in the distance, ahead of us,
I see this little tiny line in the sky.
And as time went on, it just started
to get bigger and bigger.
And we realized that it was a formation
of birds that were approaching us from way far away.
And it probably took a minute for the birds to fly over us.
But during the minute, we were just
mesmerized by what we were seeing.
It was just this perfect line of birds.
And during that minute, we just stopped.
We stopped arguing.
We stopped feeling bad about ourselves.
And we just let this thing happen
and let us be blessed by it.
And once the birds flew over us, we were good.
We weren't arguing anymore.
It just changed the whole mood.
So I guess this is a piece that is about not being
able to do life all alone.
Accepting the fact that you need to rely on others to fly,
and they need to rely on you as well.
It's about imperfect people supporting one another
to elevate each other.
So there are colored lights inside of the bodies
of the birds that illuminate the ceiling with this blue light.
And it's supposed to reference the sky.
This piece is called Lost Again from 2012.
Made out of fiberglass.
5 and 3/8 by 67 by 2 and 1/2 inches.
I carved a piece of four by six and then made
a silicone mold of it.
And then I cast it in fiberglass and resin.
So it looks like wood, even up close.
I was thinking about those woodcarvers
you would see at Six Flags or county fairs that make really
cool wooden signs that you can put in your house
as decoration.
And usually people put their names or words
like family or love or home.
Or something cheesy.
But this is my version of it.
So maybe at first glance, it may look like a defeatist idea.
It's says "lost again."
but the phrase lost again has a few undertones
that I really like.
Lost again means that this isn't the first time you've lost.
It means that you fought again, even though you've already
experienced that loss in the past.
Somehow you muster up the courage
to go out and fight even though you
know what it's like to lose.
And that means something.
That perseverance is something to be proud of.
So this piece is a reminder that there's
no shame in fighting a good fight and losing.
In fact, it's a virtue.
This is called Still Burning from 2012.
Cast ground limestone, resin, enamel paint, colored light.
8 and 1/2 by 30 by 30 inches.
So similar process to the previous piece.
I took a couple of fire logs, and I set it on fire
on one side, let it burn.
And then I put it out and I made a mold and casted them.
So it's only two different fire logs that have been casted.
And it's repeated.
So it gives it this artificial feel.
Like old 8-bit video games.
All the trees look the same.
That kind of artificiality.
So this comes out of a time when I was
experiencing burnout in life.
I just didn't want to do it anymore, whatever it was.
When everything seemed to fall apart,
recognizing that there was still embers waiting to be found.
So it's about hope in the midst of despair.
It's about choosing to believe that better days are ahead.
This is called Huddle from 2012.
Mixed media.
So these are 11 life-sized self-portraits
cast in packaging tape and clothed in clothes
that I would wear.
So they look like me.
So when I became a parent in 2011,
I immediately became this person with different new rules,
right, that I had never assumed in the past.
All of a sudden, I was a protector of my kid.
Provider, a teacher, nurturer, et cetera, et cetera.
My entire life changed.
And if you've had kids, you must know what it's like.
So this is a piece that touches on that.
And so even in making everyday decisions in my life,
I was considering first the well-being of my daughter.
And so this piece portrays my decision-making process.
It's a portrayal of myself split into my new roles as
different-- wearing different hats.
And they're consulting each other in a huddle
or maybe even a prayer circle.
There's a quarterback figure in blue who's holding a clipboard.
And in the clipboard is a drawing
that my daughter made when she was just a baby still.
So it's just these lines and marks that she made.
And the 11 are seriously putting their heads together,
trying to figure out and decipher what the drawing is
all about in order to form a plan, right,
to inform their next move.
This is called This Is The End from 2012.
Fiberglass, resin, enamel paint.
36 by 24 by three inches.
So I had a show at Laguna Art Museum in 2012.
And if you remember, it was the year
that the Mayan calendar was going to end.
And so there was a lot of talk about the end of the world.
And when I was given the show schedule from the museum,
I noticed that my show spanned through the end of the world
day.
My show ended after the world ended.
Which I thought was so funny.
And, I mean, I still think it's funny.
And so I started thinking a lot about the end.
The end of the world, the end of something.
And I started making work that dealt with that idea.
This was one of them.
And it also became the working title for the exhibition.
But I'm thinking about the end as a beginning of something
new.
This is a piece called Hey, Low.
It's spelled H-E-Y, comma, L-O-W. It's a play on the word.
Mixed media on wood.
60 by 60 inches.
From 2014.
I call this my landscape painting.
The halo is made up of tiny sheep walking in a big circle.
So this piece is about experiencing low points in life
and how during that time, at the time you're going through it,
all you can do is maybe focus on taking one step after another,
hoping you're going in the right direction.
Yet sometimes it feels like you're just walking in circles.
Later on in life, you look back at this season of struggle
and realize that the hardship that you experienced
was essential in order for you to become who you've become.
And suddenly, this season becomes
one that is really important.
Maybe even sacred to you.
One that was necessary for you to become who you've become.
This is an untitled piece.
It's a piece of leather stained and carved from 2014.
57 by 36 inches.
So my work deals with my own experiences and stories
from my own life.
So sometimes they portray my family.
My daughter was born in the year of the rabbit.
My son in the year of the snake.
So the rabbit and the snake are working together in this image,
protecting each other, doing life together,
taking on the world out there.
And it's what every parent hopes for, right, I think.
Here's another of that series.
So when I was in elementary school,
we made these drawings on distressed brown paper
bags, torn and stained to look like animal hide.
And I was taught that Native American people
would make these drawings on animal
hide to record their life.
So this is my version of it, recording my family, my life,
what's going on.
Here's a detail of the carving.
So I have this--
it's a leather tooling tool that gouges out
the surface of the leather.
This is a piece called F Minus from 2015.
Mixed media on wood, 12 by 12 inches.
So I teach at Loyola Marymount University.
And I often joke with my students
about the F minus grade.
I haven't done it in a while, because it's insensitive,
I think, so I don't joke about their grades.
But whenever they do something silly or something messed up,
jokingly I tell them that I'm going to give them an F minus--
which is not a thing.
So this piece is about drawing life
from those moments of failure.
Recognizing that there are many things
to be gained from those moments.
There are F minus shaped ponds, or puddles, rather.
And the sheep are being nourished by the water in them.
This piece is called This Is Our Prayer.
In parentheses, We're Leaving Together.
From 2017.
Mixed media and a church pew.
60 and 1/2 by 34 by 32 inches.
This piece started with an email from the church I was going to.
So they were remodeling.
They were going from pews, traditional pews,
to chairs in their main sanctuary
so that they can accommodate more events.
So they were trying to get rid of these pews,
and they tried to sell them first,
I think, and nobody wanted them.
They tried to give them away, and it
was hard to get rid of them.
So they did an email blast saying, anybody
who wants it can take one.
And I contemplated.
I went back and forth.
But then I decided not to take it.
And then another email came weeks later, saying,
OK, we have just one left.
Any takers?
I was like, OK, I'll take it.
Really not knowing what to do with it.
So it just sat in my studio for months, actually.
But I had a chance to sit with it and think about it,
think about what I wanted to do with it.
And I started thinking about the history of this object,
of the pew, and what it meant to people over the decades
that it existed in this space of worship.
And I started thinking about all the prayers and songs
of worship and sermons and conversations
that this pew had been a part of.
So I wanted to have an element of sound, right.
And that became important to me.
And this was right after Donald Trump had been elected
to be the next president.
And there was a lot of frustration and confusion
among my friends and my group of--
my tribe, if you will.
And all the accumulation of all the prayers
and all the frustration, state of our nation at the time,
I felt like the element of sound had
to be a universally familiar and powerful anthem
that we could all relate to.
So then the only choice for me was
to pick this song, The Final Countdown by Europe,
which is the 80s Swedish hair band.
So this sculpture plays the main riff of that song.
So I'm going to play it.
[MUSIC - EUROPE, "THE FINAL COUNTDOWN" INSTRUMENTAL]
You got to use your imagination a little bit.
[MUSIC - EUROPE, "THE FINAL COUNTDOWN" INSTRUMENTAL]
So there are these wheels in the back that are turning,
and it's motorized.
And it interacts with thing that hits the key.
[MUSIC - EUROPE, "THE FINAL COUNTDOWN" INSTRUMENTAL]
All right.
So this is an untitled piece from 2019.
It's a bunch of bottles, glass bottles.
And I made this furniture thing for it to go on.
It's 44 by 48 by 11 inches.
It's set up Molotov cocktails.
And it's also a musical instrument
that you can actually play.
So the bottles have contact mics attached to them,
and you can plug it into an amp and actually play it.
And I don't know if I've really figured out
how to talk about this piece or even
what it's supposed to be really about.
I'm trying not to censor my ideas these days.
So sometimes I make things that aren't fully thought through.
I think I was thinking about how Molotov cocktails are
these weapons, these incendiary weapons used by people who
are opposing those with guns.
And I think I'm oversimplifying it,
but I was thinking about how beautiful
that idea of fighting for your rights
or fighting for your freedom is.
This desire to fight for what you're yearning for.
There's something pure and something beautiful about--
not about the device, not about the weapon,
not about the violence.
But this yearning for those things,
for those desires for freedom, right.
I think this is the last piece I'm going to share.
It's called Bring On The Storm, also from 2019.
Mixed media.
56 by 28 and 1/2 by 13 and 1/4 inches.
So it's obviously referencing or appropriating Duchamp.
This is a kinetic sculpture, where the wheel of the bicycle
is also--
it turns and it's also this never-ending rainstick.
So I'll show you a video in a second.
So rainsticks are believed to have
been invented by indigenous people of Chile and Argentina.
And it was believed to bring about rainstorms.
So it was a tool used to plead with the god of the universe
to bring on the rain.
So this never-ending rainstick sculpture
is a stand in for me to continuously pray.
So here's a video of it in action.
I didn't have a good video of it.
This is my old studio.
The tire of the piece is made of hard plastic, plastic piping.
And there are steel beads inside that continually move and make
this rain sound.
[RAIN SOUNDS]
There's a motor.
All right, I think that's all I got for you.
And I think that's about half an hour.
So I'm going to stop sharing, and I
guess I'll take questions.
Yeah, thank you so much, Macha.
It's so cool to see your studio behind you
and to see your work in galleries and museums
and studio spaces as well.
So I don't know if I'm going to be
able to articulate this well, but I love
the dichotomies in your work.
Often there's this sense of humor that's really apparent.
But then, of course, there's also this deeper level.
You're looking at reoccurring themes
that are really serious--
vulnerability, death, fear, failure.
Obviously spiritual concerns.
Repeatedly we see the rainbow being
used in your color palette.
And so I don't know if you can talk about that.
But I just-- that dichotomy.
I mean, I guess the way that I want
my work to function in my own life
is that it's an extension of my life.
And so, as such, the themes that I feel in my work
are themes that I'm directly dealing in my own life.
And humor and lightheartedness has always
been this great entrance point for me
into difficult issues and themes.
Let's say you're in a conversation that's
really heavy.
But if you can do it with lightness of heart,
with some humor, I think it's always a better experience,
I think.
And so, even when you're confronting
something that's difficult, my approach often is--
the first step is to approach it from humor, lightheartedness.
I think it's a really great entrance point.
Yeah.
Well it also makes the works of art accessible,
I think, for folks who maybe it wouldn't be initially
otherwise, right, without that entry point, that humor.
I hope so.
And I want there to be this kind of a hook, right.
I mean, it's hard to talk about difficult issues.
But if you can get the viewers to engage
with it at a different level, then
they might be more willing to engage
in those difficult issues, I guess.
But I think you also do that a great deal with your titles,
with text in your work.
There's the play on words, right.
Is that a similar idea?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think, titles have always been difficult for me.
Sometimes I don't title things, because I
can't come up with a good one.
And so the way I see titles is--
I mean, it ought to be informative,
but I also see it as an extension of the work itself.
Yeah, and same thing with the text, right.
Text is tricky, because often it already
has a meaning that's assigned.
So I'm very aware of that and careful with the word choice.
Yeah, I do use a lot of text, I guess.
I see Nathan has his hand up.
Hey, Macha.
Thanks so much for sharing.
Hi, Nathan.
It's really fun to hear about your work
and see it in this manner.
Thank you.
Follow-up question about the humor component.
One of the things that I appreciate about your work
so much in this talk and seeing it in person
is your use of materials and the way
that sometimes your materials seem
to bypass the ways that we usually think
about art and access to that.
Yeah.
So I was wondering if you could make a comment or two about how
you're drawn to materials and how you use them.
Absolutely.
Yeah, so similar to word use or humor,
I think about accessibility for the viewers.
Right, so when they see life-sized sheep made out
of cheerleading pompoms, that's funny, I think.
But it's also recognizable.
When you walk up to the piece, you might feel the familiarity.
Or seeing cardboard in the work.
I think it's another way to connect
with viewers that aren't necessarily artists, right.
When I start using maybe epoxy clay,
people don't know what that is.
They have no idea.
But when they see cardboard, they can point to it
and go, oh, I know what that is.
I know how that works.
So again, I think it's an entrance point.
And then I also think about just my own practicality, right.
I can't always be spending a ton of money
on expensive materials.
Cardboard is just around.
Right, things that are available at hardware stores.
They're around and they're not as expensive as fine art
materials, oftentimes.
And so it's like really anything goes in terms of materials.
I think if I had just a ton of money,
right, materials would change in a way.
Thank you.
Thanks, Macha.
I appreciate that.
We have some questions popping up in the chat.
I want to try to maybe get to a couple of them--
in order, maybe.
And I apologize if I'm saying your name wrong.
Sari, I think, has a very practical question here.
It says, "I wonder how or where do you start your artworks
after the exhibition?"
Yeah.
A really great question, Sari.
So I usually try to keep them for a while.
If it's a show at a museum or art center where
the purpose isn't to sell the work,
they come back to my studio and they sit here for a while,
right.
This summer, I built a storage shed next to my garage.
So I have some works in there.
But I also recently moved my studio,
so I had a much larger space that I was working out
of with a lot of storage space.
But eventually I have to just get rid of them.
Take a hammer to them.
Because to me, once I make the work
and show it a couple few times and I've photographed it,
the piece is done.
I don't have to hold on to it.
That's just a reality that I encountered as I just started
making more and more works.
I just literally ran out of space,
so I had to start, yeah, just getting rid of old works
and recycle parts and take things apart.
But if I'm lucky enough, I can sell them or even
give them away.
Yeah.
But very few people have room in their home
to house larger objects like this.
Well, especially when you work life-size, right, often.
So, Cameron, I saw your hand.
Do you have a question?
Yes, I do.
Thanks for the good talk and the good work.
Thanks, Cam.
Good to see you.
Nice to see you.
One of the things I'm wondering about
is as we looked at your work you went through image by image,
it's clear that you spend a lot of attention
on crafting these pieces.
So it might be common materials, but just
real attention to detail.
And I wonder if you might just comment
on how you think that the work of craft
relates to the work of artmaking.
Thanks.
Thanks, Cam.
Yeah, I think about that a lot.
Especially when I'm working with materials
that are recognizable.
I mean, I'll go back to cardboard again.
If I can heighten the quality, then
it creates this wow factor, I think.
Especially with materials like cardboard,
which is associated with storage or just shipping.
I mean, the cardboard is usually or almost never
the thing that you're taking care of, right.
It's the thing that goes on the inside.
So if I'm treating cardboard as this valuable material
and spending a lot of time in the craft process,
I think it really changes the, I don't know, the--
what people think about cardboard.
And that's really what I'm after.
I've always strived to make the best quality of anything
that I can make.
At least on the surface, right.
If you look on the back, you'll see all the imperfections.
And to me, it's a really--
I don't know.
I don't know if I can articulate it.
When a viewer who doesn't know art that well,
right, sees work that's made out of something
that's very familiar to them but used in a very different way--
a lot of care, a lot of attention to detail--
it does something in their head.
And it heightens their experience, I think.
So that's what I'm after.
Can you talk more about what you said about trying
not to censor yourself?
Yeah.
Yeah, so what I mean by that--
earlier on in my journey as an artist,
I always felt like I needed to have a really good idea
before I started working, started making a piece that was
going to be a finished piece.
So I would spend a lot of time just thinking about it,
tweaking things about it.
And sometimes I would get to a point
where I just didn't make it.
Because it just never got to that
point where it was good enough.
Nowadays, I have weird ideas.
I have an image in my head maybe--
I'll just start exploring it, not
really knowing what it's really about or where it comes from.
That's what I mean.
So I'm trying not to censor my own ideas.
Right, I'm trying to like get it out and just see
if it even works.
And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
But I think for me, the exploration of bad ideas
perhaps has been a positive thing.
It always leads to something-- something good, something new.
Well, it also connects to your interest in exploring failure.
Yeah, I think so.
So it looks like Kai and Robert--
their questions intersect a bit.
Asking about who your main audience is.
And also Robert says, "As a man a creator fully immersed
in two cultures, one, how does this duality reflect
in your artwork, and two, does your artwork resonate
more closely with viewers from America or Japan--
if a difference exists at all?"
Yeah.
So let me answer that one first, because I just
forgot the first question.
Oh, audience.
Right, audience, OK.
I've always wanted to have a broad audience.
Anybody that appreciates anything
that's visually interesting.
It sounds greedy, maybe.
But my materials, my processes are designed in that way.
I've always wanted to connect with people
not just who are well versed in art,
but also people who aren't, right.
Like parents of artists maybe, or friends who don't really
know me as an artist, right
So I think I want my materials to reflect that.
I want my processes to reflect that.
In terms of my own culture, I think
that I'm very aware of how I'm influenced
by the American culture and the Japanese culture.
But I also think of it like a hybridized subculture
that takes in these different cultures, I guess.
So growing up, I lived in Japan for the first nine
years of my life.
I grew up watching anime, reading manga.
And I still do that.
I don't watch anime as much but, I still read manga.
And so visual culture at a young age all came from Japan.
And at that time, I felt like Japan, at least where I lived,
it was more just generally more committed to visual aesthetics,
I guess, than it was here.
And I felt that when I moved here in '88.
So that's my background.
But since then, I think most of my influences,
at least in terms of living life, has come from here.
Yeah, and I don't I don't think about Japanese audience
versus American audience.
Robert, that's a good question, but I don't have the answer.
I only see things the way I see things,
so it might be a better question for Japanese viewers.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know how they're received.
We have a question from Nina here in the chat.
"Do your personal projects ever inform
the ones you assign in the classroom,
or do you try to keep your academic life
separate from your professional artworks?"
Yeah, good question.
So, yes, it does, Nina.
I think I've become an expert at my own work, right.
So as such, my processes, my materials
are very familiar to me.
This thing, right, this thing we're doing in class right now,
this is the process that I use for many
of my more slick sculptures.
So I think of it this way.
The better artist I become, right, the more
I have to teach my students.
And so I think my studio practice
is really important to the things
that I do in the classroom.
It informs a lot of what I do in class.
So if I stop learning myself, I think
it's a disservice to my students.
So I often give my students little tips that
aren't in how-to guide books.
Or it's from my own experience, right.
So what I'm learning in my process,
yeah, directly informs how I teach.
Thanks much.
I see Stephanie has her hand up.
Stephanie, do you want to ask the final question?
Hi, Stephanie.
Hi.
How's it going?
All right.
So I had a question related to some of the symbols
and themes I see in your work.
And you've been making work for a long time,
so you have evolved a lot of these themes
over previous periods that our country has been going through.
And I see interesting symbols and themes
related to a transformation of toxic masculine aggression,
where the arrows and the weaponry
and the idea of winners and losers and things like this
get transformed into a more holistic and an almost
medicinal, soulful experience.
And then I noticed that you were talking
about in the last piece, this Molotov cocktail style piece,
and having some kind of thoughts about it.
And I'm just wondering if maybe over the last four years,
as toxic masculine aggression has
taken on a different tenor in our country
and the feeling of violence that maybe we
used to have as being really far away,
and now we have these insurrections happening
in the US Capitol--
if those themes are taking on a different weight
or a different--
or if you're experiencing some of these symbols and themes
that you've worked with before, if you're experiencing them
in a different way.
Sorry, that was a very loose question.
Yeah, no.
Great discussion topic, I think.
I think so.
I mean, I think obviously the last four years
have has felt really different, right.
So the things that I'm thinking about, the way that I'm living
my life has changed, right.
So I don't know if I've specifically
thought about those ideas that you just mentioned.
I haven't really put a lot of thought
into how those things have changed.
But definitely, right.
Yeah, and I never really equated those--
like the arrows that you mentioned,
I never equated those to violence per se, right.
And I use them more loosely as things
that come your way, right.
Hardships, maybe.
But I do think they take on a different meaning nowadays.
And again, it's like this is all an extension of what I'm living
and what I'm experiencing.
And so, yeah, I think so.
I mean, I-- and if it's not--
I think it'll continue to change.
It will continue to evolve.
Yeah, and something that meant one thing years ago
may not mean that anymore.
And it may not mean what it means now in a few years,
right.
So, yeah, I don't know.
That doesn't really answer your question,
but something to think about, I think.
Well, I see you using the symbols.
They're very symbolic, right.
They're things that are far away from our direct experience,
like--
Sure.
-- arrows and Molotov cocktails, which we haven't experienced
a lot in our lifetime.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that is actually a direct--
I mean, it's information that I'm getting from--
whether it's internet media, or whatever it may be.
Right, it's not my own experience,
but experience as somebody who's consuming these informations.
Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I think as the world changes,
as our country changes, I think it will inform my work.
And I think it will continue to change my work.
Cool.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks, Stephanie.
Great question, Stephanie.
So that sounds like that one's to be continued, for sure.
Huge thanks to Macha for your generosity today.
We're super lucky to spend a little bit of our afternoon
with you and learn more about your practice.
And thanks to all of you who carved out some time as well.
Take care, and see you next time.
Thank you all.
It was fun.
[CLOSING NOTES]