Continuing through September 7, 2025
Artists in the Bay Area have played a significant role in the 20th century to nudge the realm of craft away from the decorative toward an engagement with contemporary fine art practice. This would include the work of influential ceramicists like Peter Voulkos, Robert Arneson, Jim Melchert, and Viola Frey. Among weavers, the work of Kay Sekimachi is similarly prominent.
Over her long career Sekimachi has found ways to augment and even subvert the traditional definition of weaving in every conceivable way, while remaining within hailing distance of the craft values she embraces: grace and ephemerality. This impressive mini-retrospective of approximately 45 pieces, on loan from the Forrest L. Merrill collection, includes a wide range of approaches: artist books, ceiling-hung objects, bowls, framed fabric pieces, work in monofilament, and much more.
At 10 by 12 inches, “Homage to AM I” and “II” (2007) are among the smallest objects on view, but they quietly dominate the exhibition. One is tempted to hold one’s breath approaching these seemingly fragile textile paintings. They are so thin that spaces between some of the threads allow light to pass through.
In “Homage to AM” Sekimachi duplicates Agnes Martin’s rigorous grid paintings, translating them into woven linen, fabric dye and permanent markers. The central image is framed by perimeter borders and five to seven equidistant thin black horizontal lines. Vertical lines are much more varied and complex with differing densities, widths and shades from black to brown to white. Martin’s aesthetic epitomizes how apparent simplicity can conceal both complex math and an unexpected emotional wallop within abstraction. Sekimachi is able to translate this into weaving. Her “Homage to AM” series speaks softly but carries a big stick.
Sekimachi takes the near-transparency of the “AM” works to a much larger scale in “Eyelash Casement Fat” (1953), a looping warp brocade sculpture made from linen hung an inch or so off the wall. It alternates three dozen dense brown vertical lines with airy, semi-transparent ones for an effect that suggests a gentle rainfall. A related work, the stunning “Room Divider” (1960), made in part of woven lace, is about seven feet tall and a yard wide, with six vertical stripes, alternately clear and black, sheer and tilted parallelograms. The work is presented off the wall, flipping back and forth between sculpture and interior design.
As her work continued to move off the wall in the early 1970s, Sekimachi created a series titled “River” consisting of both black and clear monofilament in long, narrow bundles that hang from the ceiling to just above the floor, much like Ruth Asawa’s wire constructions. Its shredded lines cohere and disassemble as the eye travels down its length. Sekimachi’s “Marugawa” series of five card-woven, seamless linen tubes continues that line of investigation, adding color and depending on a more cohesive fabric texture than the “River” works. They are often striped, sometimes in black and white, sometimes in white and tan, and one features red, mustard, black and undyed stripes. A shimmering six-layer woven monofilament work, “Ogawa II,” wriggles in space like a giant white pelican about to land. Her oeuvre exudes joy and exhilaration as Sekimachi discovered more and more possibilities within her medium.
Boxes are inherently mysterious: they might contain anything. Sekimachi’s “Takarabako” series are fabric boxes with attached lids containing three-dimensional weavings sealed like time capsules. “VI” alternates black seated triangles with grey triangles on point; the undyed “lid” cleverly folds in on itself. “Kiriwood Vessel” resulted when Sekimachi received a gift of rare and valuable Japanese laminated kiriwood veneer paper. She couldn’t bring herself to cut up the precious material, so she invented ways to sew and fold whole sheets to make a basket. A chopstick — the perfect size and color — serves as the armature that props it up.
When Sekimachi was a little girl, her family was sent to Manzanar. Children were allowed to bring two toys. She chose her paper doll collection and her picture book made of tile-like pages stitched together. Four decades later she made meticulous accordion-style artist books, harking back to that childhood possession. “100 Views of Mount Fuji” (1981) translates the classic Hokusai project into a mist-shrouded dreamscape made impressive both by skillful execution and evanescent imagery.
The National Endowment for the Arts has until now funded fellowships of $25,000 for National Heritage artists working in traditional crafts. While the NEA now fights for its institutional life, putting that modest award at risk, the Japanese Minister of Culture identifies distinguished senior crafts artists as Living National Treasures, awarding each an annual stipend of two million yen, about $15,000. Sekimachi, a lifelong Berkeley resident who never accepted limitations on her expansive practice, would be a prime candidate for that designation if only she were a Japanese citizen … or if America were enlightened enough to properly support our NEA.
