A view of four pieces in the east gallery of the Noguchi
exhibition at the Bryan Ohno Gallery.

Photos provided by the Bryan Ohno Gallery

By Ann-Marie Stillion
Northwest Asian Weekly

It was a blustery day last Saturday when I visited the Bryan Ohno Gallery. Upon arrival, I thought it was closed. Little light appeared to glow from the large windows in the wintry gloom. The front door was locked, but small signs directed visitors to the alley and a large red door for entry. I pressed the buzzer and entered, trading wet shoes for comfy slippers.

Inside, ikebana (a Japanese flower arrangement) greeted me in the entrance, and when I finally glimpsed the collection of steel sculpture spread out on a pastel painted floor, I seemed to have found a mysterious home. The world faded except for the sound of seagulls or a distant motor running.

The intimate and inviting setting was inspired by Isamu Noguchi, who spent his life developing a way to express his dual Japanese and American heritage, Bryan Ohno, the gallery's owner and director, explained.

Asking people to leave their shoes behind provides a kind of intimacy and a touch of the Asian aesthetic. Ohno points out that the average time a visitor stays in a gallery is 45 seconds, but with the slippers, that has slowed to a lengthy five to 10 minutes. The gallery owner says, "Art can't be rushed," and beckons visitors to have a "unique and memorable experience within the walls."

Ohno says emphatically that it is Noguchi's work that enables him to continue reaching beyond the standard gallery-viewing experience. "Noguchi has introduced a vocabulary, a doctrine, that calls us to look at the culture in Asia and how that culture interacts, merges and coexists with the rest of the world," he said.

Ohno continues, "Until now, as Americans, we have been Western-centric, and as the country grows, that is changing.

"The right and wrong, good and bad, ugly and beautiful, is Western while the East is an expression of oneness where opposite qualities coexist."

Noguchi was born in 1904 in Los Angeles to Leonie Gilmour, an American writer. His father, the Japanese poet Yonejiro (Yone) Noguchi, had returned to Tokyo before he was born. Gilmour moved to Japan with her son in 1907, reuniting briefly with Yone Noguchi. But 17 years later, Gilmour decided to return to California, taking along with her Isamu and his younger sister, who had been born in Japan.

With encouragement from his mother, he soon began taking a sculpting class in New York.

Through his work and philosophies, Noguchi spent his life trying to resolve the divergences of the East and the West. When he was in America, he brought the Eastern point of view to the West; when he was in the East, he conveyed the Western point of view.

Ohno calls Noguchi one of the five great sculptors of the 20th century. That group includes Rodin, Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp and Henry Moore.

In 1999, Ohno developed another remarkable installation that included the Akari Light Sculptures, Noguchi's paper lanterns. Considered icons of 1950s modern design, they have been handmade from washi paper and bamboo ribbing for half a century by the original manufacturer in Gifu, Japan. There was a book published by the gallery that year that included an essay by Sam Hunter, entitled "Isamu Noguchi." It is on sale in the current exhibit.

Here, steel is the primary medium. The organic and geometric forms are made of galvanized steel, once merely the material of siding and heating ducts.

The process, no longer practiced in the U.S., involved dipping rolled steel in an acid bath, then into boiling zinc, producing ambient effects of heat, steel, air and moisture. They were completed at the famous sculpture and print workshop in Los Angeles, Gemini G.E.L., where mature artists work with skilled craftsmen to produce valuable editions.

This series was done near the end of the sculptor's life, between 1981 and 1983. Eighteen were editioned for each piece, the only art that Noguchi ever produced at Gemini. "I.N." and "82" are welded onto the back of each piece and a silk screen plate holds further details. These dozen or so pieces are some of the few that remain for purchase.

If you go, pay close attention to the wall cards that tell a short story of each piece in Ohno's sparse and uniquely descriptive prose. During his long and productive career Noguchi pursued the question of who we are on this Earth. The gallery owner enjoys a special relationship with his life and work, and this is reflected in the carefulness of the writing.

Noguchi said, "All our imagination derives from nature, and however we stretch it, it alludes to things in nature." And so the themes in the gallery are found in the sculptor's naturalistic titles, like "Cactus Wind," "Wind Catcher," "Sparrow" and "Kaki-Persimmon."

The exhibit, two years in the making, was put together using pieces from collections and exhibits in New York and Arizona.

It is impossible to state here all areas of life that Noguchi touched -- from the design of everyday things to vast parks and monumental sculptures. His body of work is large, varied and pervasive.

There is a model in this exhibit that hints at this, called "Sky Viewing," a monumental work on the grounds of Western Washington University -- "an effort to tie sculpture to outer space," Noguchi said. Here in the Pacific Northwest we also enjoy the sculptor's "Black Sun" at the Seattle Asian Art Museum and "Landscape in Time" at the downtown Federal Building.

Noguchi, whose goal was to make sculpture a useful part of everyday life, died at age 84 with a 400-acre park in Sapporo, Japan, and a large sculpture for an airport on the drawing boards. A measure of his greatness can be experienced at the Bryan Ohno Gallery.

"Isamu Noguchi: Steel Sculptures" is on display now through Feb. 1 at the Bryan Ohno Gallery, located at 155 S. Main St. in Seattle. For more information, call 206-667-9572 or visit www.bryanohnogallery.com.