Early 21st Century Akiko Sugiyama, Akiko Sugiyama Japanese Calligraphy Painting Collage, 3D Shadow Box Sculpture

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Akiko Sugiyama (Japanese/American, B.1947)
Collage, Lucite Shadow Box Painting, mixed media Japanese paper sculpture in plexiglass display box.
titled "How … Read more Akiko Sugiyama (Japanese/American, B.1947)
Collage, Lucite Shadow Box Painting, mixed media Japanese paper sculpture in plexiglass display box.
titled "How does your garden grow" twin blooms with golden pod.
Sculpture is on stretched canvas mount and covered in Plexi,
With the option of being hung on a wall or displayed flat.
Signed on lower edge on front of canvas mount.
Dimensions are approximately: 12.5 wide X 12.5" tall X 6 deep.

Akiko Sugiyama majored in oil painting at Joshi bijutsu Daigaku (Women's College of Fine Art) in Tokyo, Japan. She moved to Florida in 1974. She has received awards from the Smithsonian Craft Show, American Craft Expo, Washington Craft Show, and Palm Beach Fine Craft Show.

“A plain flat sheet of paper is the starting point for expressing my mood or satisfying a sculptural urge,” notes Akiko Sugiyama. It is easy to see the creative energy of her mind and richness of her talent when looking at her exquisite paper collages.

Sugiyama’s work is a blend of Eastern and Western esthetics. She graduated from the Women’s College of Fine Arts in Tokyo with a BA in Oil Painting, where she concentrated on European art and techniques. However, her Asian heritage remained a major creative factor in her work.
Akiko Sugiyama's intricate, complex and delicate sculptures are made almost entirely of paper. She rolls, twists, paints, textures, stripes, sews, wraps and spins using paper she collects from all over the world.
Since 1984 when she first began showing her work, Sugiyama has been honored with over 60 Best in Show Awards, Awards of Excellence and in 2011 the Smithsonian Craft Show, Gold Award. The materials and detail in her work are a study in perfection, both delicate and spiritual. Yet the expressiveness of the work can be Western. “The Japanese influence on my work is unavoidable since I was born and raised in that culture. Today I allow my works to be honest to myself, including my early influences, particularly Japanese children’s tales that I heard in my early years of life. These former fantasies and feelings thus impart a flavor to many present day experiences in the United States,” notes Sugiyama. Working with rice or parchment paper, she paints it and then rolls, folds, cones, curls, crushes, pierces, cuts or rends it into compositions that reveal the artistic aspects of paper. She explores both the cultural and artistic aesthetics in her collages, giving us a rich body of work.
She has created works of art with paper and other materials such as wire, wax, gold leaves, dried leaves, and whatever else she would find on the ground that inspired her.

Sugiyama makes a deliberate effort to form multitudes of hand-colored and hand-cut paper pieces into subtle designs that are meant to convey the more enduring human aspects of life. Origami, Japanese folk art, children’s stories and folk tales, heard in her early years, diffuse in larger works that reflect personal experiences and views of our contemporary society.

Akiko Sugiyama has shown her work at universities, museums and galleries throughout the United States at venues including the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, FL; the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, FL; Philadelphia Museum of Art (PA), Atlanta International Museum of Art and Design (GA), Georgia Museum of Art, Orlando Museum of Art (FL) Deland Museum of Art (FL) and the Tampa Museum of Art (FL), the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH; and Chase Edwards Contemporary Fine Art in Bridgehampton, NY, amongst others. She has also received top awards from shows such as the Smithsonian Craft Show, American Craft Expo, Washington Craft Show and Palm Beach Fine Craft Show. Akiko has taught children workshops at the Deland Museum of Art (now Museum of Art Deland) and instructed adults in Sumi ink drawing. See less