About

Yadda yadda yada, talk talk talk. Some folks are great at the social media limelight, and I admire them in a way fish admire birds flying while they soar under the water. In the quiet. Largely out of view.

Most of you know that Kim is a 4th Generation Japanese American, and really would like to keep a low profile. She likes to have her work speak for itself. But people like to have context, so here you go.

Kim leads multiple lives with some streams waning to a trickle while other parts flood all the time and space. But a constant through all of those floods is art. What floods? Jobs, the kinds that can be all consuming (work at City Hall, work at Phoenix Public Library, Founding Executive Director of the Children’s Museum of Phoenix, Founder/Owner and Lead Designer/Artist of the Collaborative Burgeon Group). Family, like having two exquisite babies almost 18 years apart (same husband) and some grandsons too who tug on heartstrings. Community, with 4 non-profit 501 (c)(3) forms to help found (Phoenix Center of the Arts, Greater Coronado Neighborhood Association, Children’s Museum of Phoenix, the Co-Op Preschool), and boards to sit on to give back. Living, the art of laundry and coffee, jam and friends, wine and tidying up. Earth, with it’s commanding presence noted in my daily bike commute, my garden, camping and hiking by moonlight.

Still, every day, there has always been art. Sometimes it was just a scribble scrabble note, a collage line cut from paper, a photo nudged out of a meeting with the most exquisite light. Other times there were bursts of bodies of work, museum shows, and finalist interviews for Public Art.

In the last dozen years as art has become work and work has become art in one way, I’ve been secretly pining for art without an audience (as my collaborative work is so very much public and installed), art without form, just concepts and time away from being productively making.

Art as silence and stillness even. So my most recent body of work has be an attempt to capture that, the quite sunset at the end of the day that catches my breath, the waft of an orange blossom opening, the first terrible, horrible, and I’m still laughing joke from my youngest child.

Because despite all of the ‘accomplishments’ (which don’t matter one whit), it is all in this second and moment we’re here together witnessing being alive.

Welcome to my website. It is hard to be long winded swimming underwater as I do, so these are all the words I’m mustering for this website so far.