Currently part of a group show at Pressition Art Gallery (www.pressitionart.com), Etsuko Ichikawa's work is equal parts originality, femeninity, risk and metaphysical quest. She defines her art as a "continuing investigation of what lies between the ephemeral and the eternal"; a most delicate subject indeed for is there anything that separates them? We are not talking about some tangible concepts here! And so it becomes a matter of instinct to apprehend the inevitable delicacy behind Ichikawa's quest. I mean, she works with glass and paper, certainly a fragile pair! Yet there is something deeply strong and grounded about the Tokyo-born artist. Maybe it's the energetic "strokes" of hot molten glass on plywood-like paper, the charred traces of each movement hurting the paper's surface like an indeleble ritual tattoo. Behold! Welcome to the birth of pyrographs.
Widely interviewed, exhibited and reviewed, the artist brings her oriental heritage to her Seattle-based art by means of highly suggestive Japanese words that translate into such concepts as encounter (deai), feeling (kokoro) and atmosphere (funiki).
Etsuko Ichikawa guards the secrets and marvels of glass throughout an impressive body of work that runs smoothly from an abstract drawing that may last an eternity to vibrant installations of ephimerous nature. And so it is her work comes full-cycle.
