Detail: The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens invites you to Light as Air: The Buoyant Sculptures of Mariko Kusumoto, a special exhibition celebrating the sustained devotion to traditional craft as interpreted by the innovative contemporary artist, Mariko Kusumoto. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Kusumoto grew up in a 400-year old temple in Japan. The beauty of the landscape and the textures of the aging temple always intrigued the emerging artist. She studied painting and printmaking at Musashino Art College in Tokyo and at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. After several years of working in metal sculpture, Kusumoto began to experiment with tsumami zaiku, the ancient art of folding and pinching fabric. Mariko Kusumoto’s fiber creations are inspired by a range of phenomena, from organic to man-made. Many of the diaphanous forms seem to be floating in water, eliciting images of a lush aquatic garden. In Light as Air, Kusumoto will expand the scale of her transparent sculptural forms to create a unique, on-site installation that will meander and float into all dimensions of the gallery space.