SARA NISHIKAWA
Steeped in nostalgia, Sara Nishikawa’s work is defined by the homes she grew up in. Her practice revolves around the domestic space and often focuses on the kitchen and memories attached to the meals and snacks that were always around.
Nishikawa undertakes a deep research of the foods that bring her joy and comfort; drawing and documenting the containers, baskets, bins, and stools from her childhood, and experimenting with the ceramic size and shape based on those foods and items. Rolling out coils, flattening out slabs, and building ceramics with singular function in mind, Nishikawa focuses on the everyday objects that formed those homes. A set for a quick breakfast of yogurt, blueberries, and granola, a single egg, a basket full of onions for french onion soup or tea towels from the kitchen, the stool used to climb on to reach the top shelf, the chair she sat on as she watched her grandma fry bacon-wrapped shrimp, a drying rack for a bacon-wrapped shrimp right out of the oil, and a small plate where each berry has its own spot and iterations of individual black berry holders. They might be for the same item over and over while she searches for a form, but she finds specificity to be the most inspiring set of parameters.
Born and raised in Honolulu, HI, Sara Nishikawa is an artist based in Detroit, MI. She was recently the artist-in-residence at Greenwich House Pottery in New York and has exhibited her work with Simone DeSousa Gallery and Spaysky Fine Art Gallery LLC. She runs Mostly Butter, an artist residency where she and an artist bake something they’ve always wanted to bake. She holds a BA in Psychology from Loyola Marymount University, MA in Visual Arts from CSUN, and an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Arts. She has a small dog named Angus and a cat named Kitty.