"Komorebi" ーWoven Light by Yuri Kinoshita

July 17, 2024

" My work is an attempt to bridge Earth and sky, Eastern and Western culture, and to evoke the beautiful relationship that is possible between interior space and the great wonder of nature. "

ーThis project is a solo exhibition by lighting artist Yuri Kinoshita, which will be held for about a month at Kura Monzen Gallery in Kyoto. Kyoto is where she spent her childhood, and her new work "Woven Light" is based on an experience where she was reminded of the time she spent in a Kyoto townhouse as a child when she was exposed to comfortable natural light in her studio in Georgetown, Seattle, and the work is closely related to the space of Kyoto.

【　Yuri Kinoshita　】

・・・Born In Kyoto, Japan, Yuri graduated with honors from Osaka Fashion Institute, Department of Interior Design. After traveling throughout Africa, Europe, India, Asia and South America, she settled in the U.S. to expand her artistic skills and passion for lighting design. Now based in Seattle, Yuri works with organic materials to create small and large scale sculptures of ‘Interwoven Lights’. Her site specific installations continue to explore the interrelations of play between light and shadow within her medium."

" I was curious from a young age about the relationship between nature and craft. Growing up in Kyoto, Japan, my family has manufactured kimonos for three generations. The richly-pattered textiles that surrounded me from childhood always showed fine descriptions of natural beauty. I became particularly interested in their backgrounds* beautiful colors of the sky, and the colors of light that were brought to these garments had a visceral effect.

After working as a sales representative for the family business, traveling the world and exposed to a great variety of natural environments, I began working of lighting pieces from my maturing imagination.

I discovered my home in Seattle in 2008, falling in love, primarily, with the sublime, peculiar type of light. I am attracted by the abundant beauty of the Northwest, which deeply influences my work.

I am interested in ways shape, volume, texture, and color may be brought to an interior space, drawn from natural phenomena. I stitch, dye, sew, fold, and shape organic materials by hand, to create pieces that are individually fashioned to their environments. I design them to be playful, simple, unique compartments of light, with hidden surprises, just as the skies appear to me.

In 2008, Yuri moved to a studio in the Georgetown area of Seattle. Shining through the large windows of her studio there, a divine light seemed to glow between the clouds. She was showered with childhood memories of the translucent white light filtering through the shoji screens at the edges of her garden. A passion stirred within, and inspired her to begin the process of creating woven lanterns of myriad shapes and sizes using Japanese hand made paper and textiles. Like clouds in the sky, the emit a light that is softly filtered through the woven strips and the sun appears to shine brightly through the spaces in between.

This is Woven Light! "