Join us for a studio tour with artist, educator, weaver, and keen observer Lesley Kice Nishigawara.
Artist Statement
My work explores the world around us with a system of visual examination. The grid frames my work in both a conceptual and practical manner. Conceptually, the grid reflects a need for regulation and perfection; a method or system of organization. With the aim for exacting and ordered spaces, slippages in the grid appear within varied applications and renditions. Explorations into these concepts present misalignments that occur within a desire for order. Through various translations including reflections and shadows, each articulation is created following a system of self-imposed rules to shift into new forms, images, and ideas. Practically, it creates a structure for my ideas to unfold.
The work takes on multiple formal configurations to probe these ideas. Large-scale tiled textile works produce a soft and elegant interpretation of misaligned urban patterns. Layered drawings create space to activate the work through shadows and perspectival shifts. Throughout the work, the complexity of order and structure is exposed through these iterations.
Translating the grid and patterns that appear through human intervention in our built environment produces an expanded view of the world. Highlighting and refiguring the nuanced visual elements—from the regularity of a chain link fence to a shadow projected from an overpass—this work is developed through a series of iterative examinations that develop beyond their original form and meaning. It acknowledges that the simple is often more complex as it is explored; the perfect is often more imperfect than at first glance. It exposes that the limits of perfection have endless possibilities.
