Rye Artist to Install a 'Floating World' Exhibit at Rye Town Park

An art installation to remind us that the world in which we live is only temporary in comparison to the permant world that lies after death will be on display in the pond at Rye Town Park this April.

Artist Tomoko Amaki Abe is installing "Ukiyo - Floating World," on April 7. (Ukiyo refers to the temporary world). Tomoko Amaki is a Rye resident who works out of Port Chester's Clay Art Center. 

The exhibit is part of a combined series of art and environmental events and activities throughout the city of Rye, entitled “Rye Rocks.” 

These activities are focused on celebrating “eARTh Day  -- Protecting The Earth and the Art Within it -  2013”. A reception and activities will be held on Saturday, April 20th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  The rain date will be Sunday, April 21.  The reception and exhibit are free and open to the public.  There may be a charge for parking depending on the weather.  A “Making of Floating World” video will be available on Youtube. 

Tomoko Amaki Abe is a mixed media installation artist who explores the tension between transience and permanence. Having majored in painting in college, she has since worked with mixed media sculpture and installation.  Tomoko has always been interested in the intersection between planar and sculptural media. 

In recent years, she has been working primarily with clay, but continues to be interested in exploring the kind of experience clay pieces situated in space as a whole afford the viewer.  Individual pieces merely provide “clues”, which, when put together into an installation, may lead to a world beyond our imagination.  

On this specific series of works, Tomoko has been experimenting and working for over a year. Each sculpture has been made by hand, and the process involves many trials and errors regarding the choice of media as well as the structual design.  With the multiple media involved and the complex process, it can take several months to make each of these pieces.

About this work, Tomoko states: “As much as I appreciate the beauty and richness of the coastal environment that I live in, I have also been conscious of the rise of sea level and the expansion of flooding plane due to climate change.”

The series of sculptures in the park pond will be floating on the water. Each sculpture has been made out of burned rice paper coated with resin and embedded porcelain pieces.

Recycled water bottles collected by students at Rye Middle School are attached at the bottom of the sculpture pieces and they will function as buoy. Solar powered LED lights inside the bottles will shine through the sculpture.

The sculptures may remind viewers of the sinking coastal line. They may look like islands, melting icebergs, slices of water, or eroded earth. Viewers will also notice distorted letterings layered on the organic shapes of porcelain pieces, through the icy surface of the resin paper. The letters stand for the so-called “next seven sinking cities” in the world: New York City, Houston, New Orleans, Bangkok, Shanghai, Venice and Mexico City. 

At night, viewers will see the translucent pieces lit from below, making the porcelain letterings more prominent. 

Ms. Abe hopes to create an installation that reminds people of the preciousness and fragility of nature, and the alarming change we are experiencing. 

Tomoko Abe graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art and obtained BA in painting with First Class Honour, during which she also spent half a year at Escuela de Bellas Artes in Salamanca, Spain, on the ERASMUS scholarship. She has shown her works in many exhibitions both domestically and internationally and has received various awards. Her works have been featured in the media, including 500 Raku, New York Times and Ceramics Art and Perception.

This exhibit is co-sponsored by Rye Town Park, with additional support from the Rye Arts Center and Clay Art Center in Port Chester.   

 The park is located off of Forest Avenue in the City of Rye, between Dearborn and Rye Beach Avenues.  The parking entrance is near the end of Dearborn.