NAOKO OKABE Statement + CV Born: Japan Resides: California  Statement:
I am the destroyer and the healer. I use teddy bears as material because they carry childhood nostalgia. I break them and reassemble them with a humanistic and a delicate touch into quizzical sculptures and installations. The dreamy world I create with my works is mystical and optimistic, but not without flashes of a traumatic past. The used teddy bears are forced to take a bath filled with liquid clay and fired in a kiln. The insides of teddy bears are put together to loosely form the shape of a baby, that flings itself into air. Are they dead or alive? Are they saved? Can time, effort and love heal the traumatic wounds? Can the act of art making redeem guilt? I would like to say yes. The relationship I establish with my creatures is something special. My creatures create an iridescent effect on my feelings for them. While I torture them by skinning, gutting or cremating, I apologize to them for the pain to come. I ask them where they come from, who made them, and whom they have been with. Somehow a part of me transfers to them. I feel their pain and resistance. I care for them. I feel compassion towards them. My emotion and attachment to the work show through and extend to the audience. I don’t really save my creatures. I don’t really give them up to a higher cause. Still the act of art making has a cleansing effect on me. It is not therapy. Yet it soothes me. It balances me. The process cleanses the creatures, my guilt, and audience’s dark past to some extent. My bad past is still in my heart and other people’s are still in their hearts, but maybe they become lessened or a little bit cleaner. Guilt, regret, sadness, desire, love, care, generosity; they are all tumbled into the wash and come out cleaner. A part of me always will be in any work I create. I blow my spirit into them. Education
MFA, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
MA, Art Studio, State University of New York, New Paltz, NY
BA, American Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Also studied at the Art Students League of New York, Fashion Institute Technology, the New School, and School of Visual Arts in New York, NY. Exhibitions and Awards | 2008 | MFA Exhibition, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA | | | Media Monster, juried exhibition, Nahl Hall, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA | | | CCA Scholarship, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA | | 2007 | Oaxaca Project Exhibition, group show, Biblioteca Andres Henestrosa, Oaxaca, Mexico | | | Centennial All-College Honors & Scholarship Awards Exhibition, juried exhibition, Tecoah Bruce Gallery, Oakland, CA | | | Everything was Perfect II, solo exhibition, Beet Gallery, Portland, OR | | | Charles Fiske Memorial Scholarship, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA | | | Future Tense, group show, the Gensler, San Francisco, CA | | | CCA Scholarship, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA | | 2006 | 16th National Ceramic Competition, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, TX | | 2005 | Everything was Perfect, solo exhibition, SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY | | 2003 | Made in Clay, group exhibition, Greenwich House Pottery, New York, NY |
  
Bibliography KQED Gallery Crawl, podcast, http://www.kqed.org/arts/gallerycrawl/episode.jsp?id=22770, May 2008 Portland Art Dealers Association Gallery Guide, September 2007 The Asian Reporter, September 25, 2007, p.14 Ceramic Monthly, October 2007, p.42 San Angelo National Ceramic Competition Catalogue, 2006  
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