Artist profile: Loom as Laboratory
Katsura by Kay Sekimachi (1926–), 1971. Nylon monofilament; height 43, width 15, depth 13 inches. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, George and Dorothy Saxe Endowment Fund. Known for her inventive construction techniques, fiber artist Kay Sekimachi has charted a creative career that ranks alongside those of the great mid-century artists working in fiber, from Anni Albers to Lenore Tawney and Ed Rossbach. Long respected for her intimate knowledge of the loom and its expansive possibilities, Sekimachi’s formal experiments in fiber have tested the limits of her tools and materials and led to works of uncommon precision and elegance. Her seventy years making art were recently celebrated in a serene, sensuous, and cerebral exhibition, Kay Sekimachi: Geometries, at the University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive—only the latest honor for the Northern California artist. Wave by Sekimachi, 1980. Linen, transfer dye, buckram lining; height 4 3/8, overall length 18 inches. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of the artist. Sekimachi was born in San Francisco in 1926, the daughter of Japanese immigrants. She and her family were among the thousands of Japanese transplants who endured internment during World War II. Yet creativity blossomed in the midst of privation. Teachers among the detainees organized themselves into a school and held art classes. (Funds for materials were provided by charitable groups and donors.) The experience supported Sekimachi’s nascent talent and introduced her to role models. Sekimachi at home demonstrating her folded forms, August 2020. Photograph by Jeannine Falino. Within a few years after the war, Sekimachi discovered her métier, and dove into weaving, making placemats and other functional objects to earn a living. Her path was forever changed by her teacher, the German émigré and weaver Trude Guermonprez (1910–1976), whose rational, Bauhaus-influenced sensibility was balanced by an openness