Naomi Shioya

Tokyo, Japan (Japanese, b. 1961)
I began making my cast work when I was in France in 1991. I only made my work of blown glass until then. But when I arrived in Marseilles, I saw a very different world….I saw many people who had come to Marseilles to seek work but found none. I saw old, crumbling buildings and people with little to do. But I saw beautiful things, too. At night the moon would shed light on the rough stone facades and the people slowly moving about. There was a certain tranquility and beauty. After all, it was the same moon that the world shares.

I soon came to feel that just making beautiful glass was vain work. Then I remembered that a friend told me that writing poetry could help crystallize ideas. During one year I made poems instead of glass. Suddenly my poems had glass-like form and color. But to realize these visions I had to teach myself to cast glass. While I was in Marseilles, France, I made twenty cast pieces, and continued to write poems.

After returning to Japan, I have continued to write new poems that inspire my work.  

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