Hiromi Takizawa

Santa Ana, CA

On view at the Bellevue Arts Museum

Hiromi Takizawa was born and raised in Nagano, Japan and lives in Southern California. Curiosity, experimentation, narrative, and materiality are the core concepts in her work. Hiromi has exhibited nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at Heller Gallery and Urban Glass in New York and Orange County Museum of Art in California, as well as group exhibitions at the Museum of American Glass in New Jersey, Huston Center of Contemporary Craft in Texas, and S12 Gallery in Norway. Hiromi is an Assistant Professor in Glass at California State University, Fullerton, and she has taught workshops at Pilchuck Glass School in Washington, Haystack Mountain of School of Crafts in Massachusetts, and Toyama Glass Institute in Japan.

Shipment from California

Long Beach is located in Southern California and is the second largest port in the United States. I used to see tons of cargo containers arriving at the Port of Long Beach to later be distributed to the rest of the country, and I always wondered what’s inside of them and where the containers would go, so I created my own version of cargo container that contained my wonders. As an immigrant, when I see these containers travel the Pacific Ocean for days, arrive in California and then set off on a new adventure to the next unknown destination, it is much like my journey and travels I have experienced since moving to the United States. I have always been fascinated by the visual phenomenon that occurs when light reflects on glass. I experiment with how light travels on/through glass by installing straight neon tubes and thin blown bubbles. As a result, glass reflects the curvy surface of glass and refracts strips of lights on the wall. My hope is that the artwork offers viewers the sense of wonder as they muse over the piece.