30th March 2013: Naoko Ito: Japanese Artist

Exploring the aspect of using jars within our piece, i wanted to try and find some contextual references to help support this idea. I first of all came across this japanese artist whom uses jars within her artwork. She uses lots of variety of sized jars and within these inserts a tree branch. She cuts the branch into several pieces before putting them in the jars and then stacks these jars into the original shape of the branch, so it looks like the branch is growing inside them.

Ubiquitous
2009
Glass jar, tree
35 x 70 x 50 inches
88.9 x 177.8 x 127 cm

Cold Frame
2009
Glass jar, tree, brick
27 x 29 x 32 inches
68.6 x 73.7 x 81.3 cm

Flora 
2009
Glass jar, tree
36 x 36 x 41 inches
91.4 x 91.4 x 104.1 cm

These pieces are from Naoko’s art series “Urban Nature 2009.”

Below is a birds eye view of one of the pieces of art. I particularly like how she has involved over objects within the artwork. Books, and shelves so that it give it more feel and atmosphere. It creates a scene and story within the artwork.

Silence
2009
Glass jar, tree, wood, book, glass, plastic, nail, cardboard
60 x 50 x 35 inches
152.4 x 127 x 88.9 cm

Untitled
2009
Glass jar, wood, cherry blossom
55 x 32 x 15 inches
139.7 x 81.3 x 38.1 cm

This artist could actually influence our installation if we went forward with the idea of the jars. We could combine essences from naokos work, of using different objects instead of the jars itself. The way she has set up the jars at different levels and heights to create another visual image could influence our ending installation of combined work.

References from this post

http://www.naoko-ito.com/website03.html

http://www.thisblogrules.com/2010/01/huge-tree-branch-growing-through-glass.html