Robert Campbell and Yuki Nakamura

Kūkai: Sea and Sky

Brush and ink mixed media drawings by Kiki MacInnis

January 04 – 28, 2012
Reception / Thursday, January 05, 6–8pm

SOIL presents a new collaboration between digital media artist Robert Campbell and ceramic sculptor Yuki Nakamura.

Their first collaborative project was for the 2006 New Works Laboratory, a program between 911 Media Arts Center and the Henry Art Gallery that pairs a visual artist working in traditional media with a digital media artist experimenting with new technologies to co-create and exhibit new and innovative works of art. They created Floating Plaster / City Motion, a multimedia installation comprised of video, audio and cast sculptures incorporating three synchronized video projections. The work integrated sculptural formal aesthetics with architectonic video projections of animated imagery culminating in the creation of an evocative and dynamic installation.

Kūkai: Sea and Sky is an extension and elaboration of some of the revisited experimentations and ideas generated during their six-month residency in 2006.

"We live directly across Puget Sound from one another- one on Vashon Island, the other in Old Town district of Tacoma. Sea and sky are omnipresent in our daily imagery: as we watch the floating forms of ships, tankers, and drifting objects, we think of the sea between the Pacific Northwest and Japan, and the parts and pieces of homes washed away during Japan's recent tsunami which are floating toward these shores. The forms which we are reactivating are based on traditional Japanese wood joinery: forms that create bonds that hold parts together. We are basing our approach to combining our respective art forms on the these general ideas."