Japanese artist Kay Sekimachi has created a beautiful set of leaf bowl sculptures using skeletons of actual maple leaves. The artist added Kozo paper, watercolor and Krylon coating to the leaves to create these ethereal works of art. Sekimachi studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from 1946 to 1949. She's best known for her labor intensive loom works. In fact, she's been referred to as a “weaver's weaver.” It's been said that after she visited the weaving room, in college, and saw students working on looms, she spent her entire savings on a loom the following day even though she didn't know anything about weaving. (Talk about diving in head first!) Throughout her sixty-year career, she's created unique works of art in such natural materials as skeletal leaves, hornet's nest paper and grass.
Kay Sekimachi joins artist Bob Stocksdale, her husband, in a show called In The Realm of Nature at the Bellevue Arts Museum from July 3 to October 18. The exhibition celebrates the works of two of the most revered artists in American craft history. (The couple married in 1972.)
