September Artist of the Month

              Art At The Kent Library

Sponsored by The Friends of Kent Library

with Arts on the Lake

Exhibit: Herein Lies a Tale- Stories Without Words

Show Dates: September 1st-30st

 

  

Sharon Nakazato

    For 6 of the 8 years that prize-winning artist Sharon Nakazato lived in

Japan, she studied Asian Brush Calligraphy intensively with celebrated

contemporary master Shinzan Kamijo. She holds a license to teach from

the Japan Calligraphic Arts Association of Tokyo.  While continuing on her

Path of the Asian Brush, in recent years Nakazato has revisited her

western art background and explored an expansive range of mixed media,

some incorporating Asian calligraphy and all drawing on years of

experience with Eastern brush, ink, line, and space.

    Nakazato has exhibited widely from Tokyo to WA, CO, CT, and NY,

including one-woman shows in NYC, the Seattle area, the greater NY area,

and Ridgefield CT.  She holds a BA and MA from the U of Michigan, with

strong minors in art history, and did extensive graduate work in Japan at

Tokyo and Sophia Universities.

    An ongoing student of Japanese culture, she has lectured and published in

both Japanese and English and co-founded and served for 10 years as

Director of the Yasuragi Japan Arts Center. Until recently she ran the arts

program at Longview School, where she has taught a variety of courses

related to art history, history, writing, and Japanese language and culture.

She monitors the Life Drawing sessions at Arts on the Lake in addition to

managing FroGS Plein Air events along with the Annual FroGS Juried Art

Competition. Nakazato continues to combine an ever-widening diversity of

media in a distinctly personal expression and is now exhibiting by invitation

through the Tri-County area. Her work can be found in various private

collections.

Herein Lies a Tale—Stories Without Words

In Japan, viewers of artworks are called “appreciators.”  You are not

passive receivers but rather active participators in the art experience,

bringing your unique feelings and experiences to the works as you accept

the invitation to come into the worlds suggested by their colors, shapes,

lines (or lines defined by shapes), and settings. You co-create with the

original artist.

The truth, I believe, is that we each have our own way of responding to the

colors, shapes, the sounds of the music of a piece. In these few years, I

have been enthusiastically exploring the narratives presented by all kinds

of combinations of colors and lines. Some of my works are more obviously

abstract than others—I enjoy the way less representation allows for more

direct personal relations with the elements or materials of a piece—but

everything I do has reference to some part of my physical outer or inner

world, has meaning for me. If you like, the title offers a glimpse inside. I

have my story in the piece. However, it does not have to be yours.

Though most of us are not aware of it, standing before an artwork, we

travel around and through it with our eyes. It is an inner kinetic experience.

If we stay with it we move from thought to thought, feeling to feeling, and

create our own narrative within. (Maybe that is why we like to go on trips.

Trips offer opportunities to develop new stories, find new moments of

“Aha!”) I will be content if you find some happy, moving, or en-lightening

discoveries as I have in this journey.

My earnest wish is that you will stop and spend some happy moments

developing your own stories with the works in this exhibition!

                                                        

 Mowgli Leaves The Jungle

 Acrylic, Gouache, Watercolor

 14.75 x 12.75

$265

Forest Abundant

Acrylic, Mixed Media

18 x 15

$300

Letters from Home

Mixed Media 18"x24"

$300

Ray Lake Summer Colors Ink, Watercolor, Gouache 14 x 17.5 $375

Above and Below the Deep Dark Sea

Acrylic Painting 11 x 14 $240