ECHIZEN MANDALA is a collaborative project developed through an artist residency in Echizen, Japan, a region where handmade paper has been produced for over 1,300 years. Rather than making a work alone, I invited local papermakers and craftspeople to create a mandala together using paper they had made themselves.
The project brought painting, handmade paper, temple space, and local spiritual traditions into one shared visual structure. It was presented not in a white-cube gallery, but in a temple, where the materials, history, and community could remain connected.
While creating a painting of Kawakami-Gozen, the goddess of paper, I was invited to participate in a local ritual connected to papermaking with the permission and trust of the community. This experience shaped the work deeply. I approached the painting not only as an image, but as an offering, a form of listening, and a way to honor the memory, labor, and spiritual life carried by the material.
Through this project, I came to understand traditional materials not only as physical materials, but as carriers of memory, labor, place, and relationship. ECHIZEN MANDALA continues my interest in visual language as a way to connect past and present, Japan and Los Angeles, individual marks and communal meaning.
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