AAWAA ARTIST PROFILE

Reiko Fujii

Reiko Fujii was born in the 1950s in Riverside, California. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from John F. Kennedy University in 2004. She also earned a BA in Psychology and a K-8 teaching credential, both from UC Berkeley. She has shown her work at various art venues, including a multi-media performance for The Riverside Metropolitan Museum in 2007 and 2009, and wearing her Glass Ancestral Kimonos at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York in 2009. She has exhibited at the Berkeley Art Center, the Bedford Ga llery (Walnut Creek), di Rosa Preserve (Napa), Olive Hyde Gallery (Fremont), JFK University Art Gallery, the Sun Gallery (Hayward), and SOMAarts in San Francisco. She was the recipient of the “Susan Seddon Boulet Award” from JFK University in 2004, received the “Steven P. Corey Award” at the 2006 PCBA Bookworks Exhibit, and also received several awards for her glass art at Ohlone College in Fremont. Her Scrolling Endangered Species book is included in the recently published Eco Books by Lark Press and her Grandma, the Ultimate Recycler book is in the Special Collections of the Olin Library, Mills College. Her short documentaries have been shown at the “Women of Color” Film Festival (Berkeley), the Berkeley Small Films Festival, and the “Society of California Pioneers” (San Francisco). Her nine minute documentary, “Arden Farey: Whistlebower” was featured as “The Video of the Week” on KarmaTube the first week of January 2009. Her half-hour documentary about Arden Farey, a talented artist who suffered from MS and was a paraplegic, was shown on various cable TV stations in the Bay Area in 2008.

Statement

Reiko Fujii is a third generation Japanese American artist, specializing in creating mixed media art. Self-discovery through experimenting with and mixing art techniques such as performance, video-film making, installations, kiln-formed glass and bookmaking has led her to using a multimedia approach in expressing her innermost thoughts. Art making has provided her with a therapeutic process of introspection, helping her to become more conscious about each of her actions and thoughts, evoking self-growth and a deeper appreciation for life. In recent years, she has been inspired to explore her identity based on her Japanese and American heritage. However, she does not limit the scope of her art work to ethnological ideas. Her art involves a wide array of subject matter, including documentary work, experimentation with recycled and re-purposed materials, and storytelling.

http://www.reikofujii.com