Kazumi Ikemoto
Kazumi Ikemoto
Kazumi Ikemoto graduated from the Kyoto City University of Art and is Professor of Art at Tama Art University in Tokyo. He has taught and lectured at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Urban Glass (New York), Niijima Glass Center (Japan), and others. Having exhibited widely in Japan, Europe, Australia, and the US since the late 1980s, he is acclaimed for his dynamic forms that, upon close inspection, reveal intricately painted scenes of hybrid creatures, whimsical landscapes, and distant perspectives. His enigmatic works are constructed from laminated sheets of glass, painted with representational images and sandblasted to create a translucent effect.
Painting glass with enamel pigments (colored powdered glass) rendered permanent by firing is a traditional technique known to glassmakers for centuries. Ikemoto's enamel painting is executed with remarkable precision and reveals a strong graphic imagination populated with fantastic creatures in complex and distorted landscapes reminiscent of the work of MC Escher. The artist describes these imaginary vistas as "hazy worlds of memories where past and present coexist." His work is in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass (New York), the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art (Sapporo), and the South Australian College (Adelaide).
