As I grow older, I find myself wanting to spend more time in nature for the peace of mind that it brings to me. I value the simplicity and quiet that I encounter there, surrounded by the beauty of the Japanese landscape. My art is a reflection of that beauty; nature is the source of my creativity. In my work I want to interpret the feelings and sensations of having a close connection to nature, and through it share the beauty of the changing seasons in Japan with the viewer. 

-Hiroshi Yamano  

Multimedia artist Hiroshi Yamano began a series in the 1980s titled “From East to West” when studying at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. In this series, the fish symbolize the artist himself. Yamano felt kinship with the fish: in their motion, travel, and feeling like a “fish out of water,” far from his home. 

Yamano now lives in the Kanazu Forest of Creation, a rural artist commune in Japan. There he draws upon his surroundings—often tree branches, birds, and flowers—to depict in his sculptures. Sitting side-by-side on the crux of a branch are a North American bird and a Japanese flower. Yamano has made this impossible combination of what might be a Carolina wren and a beautifully, arching branch from a flowering Japanese quince shrub, a quiet nod to his experiences in the East and West. 

-Linnea Seidling, Assistant Curator of Glass