#emma nishimura

[fairytalesandtiaras]

8-11-2018

Queen Sonja presented the Queen Sonja Print Award 2018 to Emma Nishimura. David Hockney received the honorary award for outstanding contributions to the graphics through his lifelong artistry.

08/11/2018

[queensonjas]

8 November 2018: Queen Sonja presents the 2018 Queen Sonja Print Award to Canadian graphic artist Emma Nishimura, and a Lifetime Achievement Award to David Hockney in recognition of his work in graphic art and printmaking. The Queen Sonja Print Award is the world’s leading graphic art award, and it is designed to inspire interest in and the development of graphic art.

Photos: Nina Rangøy, NTB scanpix.

[folklings]

Baachan's Patterns

Emma Nishimura is a Toronto based artist, whose work addresses ideas of memory and loss.

These beautiful pieces are from a collection called Baachan's Patterns. Four years after her grandmother died, Emma found a box of miniature items of clothing which she had made, all from paper. She has taken her grandmother's patterns and incorporated them into her own work.

More information

Emma Nishimura website

Baachan's Patterns gallery

Artist statement

Curated by

Ruth Dawkins

 A Scot currently living in Hobart, Tasmania with her husband and five year old son.

[iamjapanese]

Emma Nishimura

Locating Memory I, Archival pigment print on gampi with thread, 24.25″ x 38.25″, 2012

Locating Memory II, Archival pigment print on gampi with thread, 24.25″ x 38.25″, 2012

Locating Memory III, Archival pigment print and photogravure on gampi with thread, 24.25″ x 40″, 2012

Locating Memory IV, Archival pigment print and photogravure on gampi with thread, 24.25″ x 40″, 2012

Locating Memory V, Archival pigment print on gampi with thread, 24.25″ x 38.25″, 2012

via

[femmesfollesnebraska]

First Les Femmes Folles Discussion Forum December 14, 2011

Les Femmes Folles (LFF), this blog supporting and promoting women in all forms of creativity, was launched in April 2011. Since its inception there has been over 100 feature stories on creative women to a steadily increasing readership, strong community support and criticism about the topic.

Such was the request of the readers to take the discussion public, and with House of Loom’s help, Les Femmes Folles takes it outside of cyber world with its first discussion forum. 

Les Femmes Folles Forum: Women in the Visual Arts, December 14, 2011, includes professional artists Eddith Buis, Leslie Diuguid, Wanda Ewing, Amy Nelson and Emma Nishimura (brief artist bios below), discussing their creative work and experience, with an emphasis on the challenges of the contemporary art mechanism as a whole, what the different platforms of bringing art to light are and how that shapes the art community.  

The forum takes place Wednesday, December 14, 6-7pm, at House of Loom, 1012 S. 10th Street, with a social hour beforehand.  Attendance is free and open to men and women; guests can enjoy House of Loom’s Winter Happy Hour, 4-8 pm with $2 of all cocktails and $1 off all beers.

It is the hope of LFF that the forum is the first of many featuring women artists in various genres as the blog follows music, literature, performance, theatre and more.

Femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com, search for “Les Femmes Folles” on Facebook, or visit houseofloom.com for event listing.

Email [email protected] for more information.

Find the Facebook invitation here: http://www.facebook.com/events/195134960568829/

Bios of Panel-Artists:

Eddith Buis is best known for directing public art projects for the Omaha Metro area. After learning the process for community projects through managing grants for the Omaha Public Schools, Eddith directed the J. Doe Project, the Lewis & Clark Icon Project for the Riverfront, 5 years of summer sculpture installations at Leahy Mall for Summer Arts Festival, Benchmarks for artist-painted MAT bus benches, and exhibits at both Fontenelle Forest and Lauritzen Gardens. Eddith has taught art to all ages of students through Joslyn Art Museum, the Boys and Girls Clubs, and UNO's gifted student and adult continuing education programs. Eddith has developed projects using recycled materials in sculpture, painting projects that lead to a better grasp of color mixing and drawing projects that further students’ hand-eye coordination and understanding of perspective. These art projects can be applied to all ages of learners. Eddith Buis holds a B.S, an M.A. and a Specialist Degree in art education. She is currently an adjunct instructor at Metropolitan Community College's Fort Omaha Campus and exhibits her art regularly at local exhibitions. She is a member of the Nebraska Caucus for Women in the Arts.

Leslie Diuguid is a visual artist currently residing in Omaha, NE who works primarily in drawing and graphic design.  Her work unites unlikely pairs often creating dynamic thought provoking installations.  She explores the limits of image making by understanding how to simultaneously be transgressive and commercial. Leslie draws inspiration from fringe pop culture sources and fashion as well as the art of process and the idea of fashion-as-readymade-art.  Diuguid exhibited in Les Femmes Folles, a group show at RNG Gallery in early 2011, and had a solo exhibit at Bemis Underground last summer.

Wanda Ewing received her B.F.A. in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute. She later received both her M.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of Iowa. The artworks she creates explore the subjects of race, beauty standards, sexuality, and identity. Inspired by images found in popular culture, she often uses humorous narratives as a device for engaging the viewer. She is a multiple-award and grant winner locally and nationally and shows her work regularly. She spent a month last summer at Proyecto’Ace, an independent, nonprofit artist-in-residency visual arts center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  She curated the Les Femmes Folles show at RNG Gallery in March and is one of the selected artists in this month’s HOME exhibit with Birdhouse Interiors. Recently she was awarded an Individual Artist Grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Wanda currently lives and works in Omaha and is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.

Amy Nelson received her BFA from Creighton University in 1997 and her MFA from East Carolina University School of Art & Design in 2002. Amy has exhibited across the U.S., been an Artist in Resident at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Art in Newcastle, Maine, and has received several grants, including an Artist Grant from the Vermont Studio Center. Amy is an active member of the Omaha Arts community as a mentor in the Young Artists Program at the Kent Bellows Studio and Center for Visual Arts. Amy has given lectures on the American Craft Movement and the role art plays in civic engagement. At Creighton, Amy is an Assistant Professor of Fine Art, teaching courses in Ceramics and Art and Civic Engagement. Currently, Amy is exploring how women view their potential political power and how this may or may not be affected by their biology. By abstracting and reassembling forms based on the biological system of the ovary and fallopian tube she attempts to visually map social and political implications of women's position in the civic arena. Her current body of work, 21st Women's SuffRage, which she exhibited in Resonant Tide at Creighton’s Lied Art Gallery in September, reflects on the history of women's roles within society as we approach the year 2020, which marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.

Emma Nishimura grew up in Toronto, Canada and received her BA from the University of Guelph in 2005. Emma is currently living in Lincoln Nebraska where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her current work uses traditional etching processes to create both two and three-dimensional pieces that address ideas of memory and loss, assimilation and integration. Her work is in both public and private collections and has been exhibited in both Canada and the United States. Emma is currently working as a teaching assistant at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and has taught etching classes at Open Studio and the Toronto School of Art and worked as a Printmaking Technician at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her current work, recently exhibited at The Lichen in Lincoln, stems from her grandmother’s story, of her “struggles through the war and after.” Explained Emma, “Working in combination with my grandmother’s sewing patterns and my etchings, I have begun a series of print based works that explore my family’s stories and the experiences of other Japanese Canadians. I have focused on the ideas of assimilation and cultural integration and how different individuals found their own sense of belonging within the circumstances dealt to them.”

[femmesfollesnebraska]

Emma Nishimura, artist

Collected Stories

Artist Emma Nishimura, a student in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln MFA program, is showing drawings alongside Victoria Hoyt and Alison VanVolkenburgh at the lichen opening August 5 (details below).  She shares with Les Femmes Folles about her multi-media work which subject stems from stories she heard growing up about her grandparents' internment as Japanese Canadians during the Second World War and the multitude of encouragement and support she received from the women in her family.

Tell me about your background.

Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, living in Nebraska and the U.S.A. is a new experience for me.  I completed my B.A. at the University of Guelph in 2005 and after spending five years working as an artist/printmaker in Toronto I decided it was time to go back to school.  Drawn to UNL for their strong printmaking program, I’ve been in Lincoln for a year now, where I am currently an MFA candidate. 

Tell me about your work.

My primary medium is printmaking; it is what I have been trained in and where most of my work begins.  However, over the last few years my practice has evolved to include sewing, sculptural elements, photography, drawing and audio works.  I have always been interested equally in the processes of creating art as well as the end product and I have adapted my working methods to allow the work to become what it wants to be.  

In terms of inspiration and the conceptual roots for my work, I have been drawn to and keep returning, to the family stories that I grew up hearing.  Haunted by the stories of my paternal grandparents and their internment as Japanese Canadians during the Second World War my work looks to connect my own experiences and interpretations with these memories.  Yet throughout this process I am forever aware of the futility of my actions due to the fragile nature of memory, of it’s malleability and mediated effects.   

Collected Stories (detail)

Tell me about what you will be showing at the lichen in August.  

This August I will be exhibiting a number of recent drawings from a series entitled Inherited Narratives. Each piece depicts a different Japanese object that has been passed down to me from the Japanese side of my family.  And although I am calling them drawings, the works are actually solely composed of hand written text.  Interested in the associations that stories and memories create over the years, the drawings use text from novels, historical accounts and transcriptions from my family members version of events surrounding the Japanese Canadian internment.  Throughout my research I have come to realize how conflated my own memories of my grandparents experiences have become.   Different stories have merged together, while parts of novels and history have woven themselves into my own version of my family’s tales. 

Do you think being a woman has had an impact on your career/artistry?  

Absolutely.  Growing up in a family of women, I have found great support and encouragement from both their strength and wisdom.  Within my work I don’t often focus specifically or solely on issues related to being a woman, however my work most certainly deals with my love of stories, of how tales are passed down through generations, specifically by the women in my family.

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 Look More Ways Than Left and Right opens at the lichen, 2810 N. 48th St. in Lincoln, Friday, August 5, 6-9p.m. and continues through August 26. For more information visit thelichen.com.