Artist Kay Sekimachi creates sculptural organic bowls that are made from actual maple leaves! Spindly and delicate, the leaves are preserved in outward-reaching shapes that seem to bloom like a flower. Reinforced with Kozo paper, watercolor and Krylon, the nature-infused pieces pay homage to the beauty and fragility of nature.
With a background in contemporary fiber art spanning from the 1960s, Sekimachi has created a life long oeuvre creating art works from natural materials. With careful hands, she has made sculptural pieces of leaves, hornet’s nest paper, linen and plant fibers, each taking on new dimensional quality through weaving or meshing soft materials with natural sealants.
Related: Artist Makes Gorgeously Intricate Art Out of Fallen Leaves
Her fantastical maple leave bowl series transforms dried leaves, which have over time become skeletal wisps, as time and the elements ate away at the living tissue within the leaf. The preserved leaf skeletons take on a lace-like quality, patterned with thousands of miniscule perforations held together with thick strands of cell materials. In these pieces, the leaves’ veins become prominent, appearing like thick lines of aged color. The leaves radiate from a base, made from Japanese Kozo paper that acts as a structural support for the gauzy leaves.
The collection of leafy bowls will be on exhibition along with work by Sekimachi’s husband Bob Stocksdale at the Bellevue Arts Museum from July 3 to October 18.
Via This is Colossal
