Sitting at a table covered by pink paper at the Dennis W. Dutzi Gallery is Kiyomi Fukui. Atop the table there’s seashell-shaped sugar cubes she’s handmade. Fukui, a Master of Fine Arts student, casually sips a hot cup of freshly made hibiscus tea. She looks around invitingly.
“Would you like to sit down for a cup of tea?” Fukui asks passersby.
A cup of tea may not be what most would expect from an art exhibit. But that’s what they’ll get at Fukui’s “Reminiscing Remnants.”
The purpose of involving a tea ceremony is “to have an intimate conversation and to have a moment with one person at a time,” Fukui said.
The pink table cover is made of a Japanese Gampi paper, onto which Fukui encourages visitors to drip the residual tea. She described the Gampi table cover as a reminiscing object—something signifying the “vigil of sharing” between the artist and the audience. The tea-splattered paper then becomes part of the current exhibit to emphasize the overall theme: the circulation of reminiscing.
Fukui’s source of inspiration is her personal experience with loss. In sharing a conversation with visitors, Fukui sets out to share both lightweight and deep topics.
“I want [visitors] to leave with some reminisce of peace,” said Fukui. “That is definitely the primary goal, to feel some sort of comfort. I want the chaos to find the peace.”
An art installation at California State University, Long Beach’s University Art Museum is covered with fresh Hibiscus tea and handmade sugar cubes on top of Japanese Gampi Paper on Monday.
Describing her artistic style as subtle, Fukui ultimately leaves it up to the visitors to find a deeper understanding within her art pieces. According to Fukui, her role in society as an artist is to plant ideas and present them in a way that could not be better presented otherwise.
“If you have an idea and you act on it, it is already an art,” Fukui said. “If you have something that you want to change and you actually do it that is already acting. And action is part of the art.”
Acknowledging no understandable difference between the two, Fukui said she ultimately decided to make her career a hobby and her hobby a career. Fukui encouraged current and future art students to avoid stressing out over labels.
“Do not feel the need to be clutching on institutional labels, like the degree you have,” Fukui said. “If you don’t have an art degree you can still consider yourself an artist.”
She expressed no interest in worrying over financial outcomes behind her career choice as an artist either. Instead, Fukui described her decision to pursue art fueled by pure adoration of the visual arts.
The School of Art displays student artist’s work in Fine Art buildings 2-4, with new exhibits every week. Fukui’s “Reminiscing Remnants” can be experienced Tuesday and Thursday from noon to 5 p.m. and Wednesday from noon to 7 p.m.