Aya Miyatake: Alabaster

The Drawing Room is pleased to announce an exhibition of new alabaster sculpture by East Hampton artist Aya Miyatake, on view from May 31 through June 30. In this reflective body of work Miyatake reveals the movement and extracts hidden color of the ancient alabaster. Focused on the stone’s characteristic translucency and glow, Miyatake uncovers new dynamism within each form. The installation will present the sculptures on old farm tables, with individual works elevated on small bases of driftwood and crisp blocks of mahogany and cedar.

When selecting her raw material, the color and character held within each rough stone is a mystery. “Not knowing provides me surprise and excitement and I cherish the moment of discovery.” Transforming the coarse boulder into a geode that can be carved takes time as does exploring its inherent characteristics. Miyatake’s greenhouse studio provides long daylight hours in an environment where she chisels and files in the round on a revolving tripod, observing and balancing nuances of emerging color and fractured veins of minerals.

Only after she has chiseled away the entire uneven surface does Miyatake begin to find the dormant luminosity within the opaque stone. Especially surprising is the graphic activity of the veining–streaks of gold, coral and white minerals–that permeate and enliven the interior. This dynamic evidence of the compression caused by the evaporation of seawater over millennia offers an image of motion Miyatake accentuates as she carves. Cloudy iron formations move across the surfaces like passing weather. Miyatake notes, “At this moment perpetual movement is fundamental to my idea of form and resolution.” While some of her quiet abstract forms seem to be hibernating in an ice-white glow, others radiate rich verdant greens, amber yellow and translucent peach hues.

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