Memories of the Warehouse From a Child’s Handiwork to an Adult’s Craft.

As a child, I loved making things.
It was not that I was especially skilled. I think I simply wanted to bring the excitement in my head out into the world in front of me.

“I wonder what everyone’s faces will look like when I make this?”

When I made something interesting, not only my friends but even the grown-ups were surprised. I was so happy to see those faces that I kept on making more.

After many twists and turns, making things became my profession. The materials and the techniques have changed, but my wish to see someone’s surprised face has not.

Inside the cardboard boxes lined up here is a “small theater” that layers my origins with who I am now.

It is a world built with my imagination set free, as if I had returned to being a child. Beyond the mirror, it continues. And at the center, I placed ceramic works made by the adult I have become, with the skill and sensibility I have now.

And yet, where does a child’s handiwork end and an adult’s craft begin? For me, that boundary is blurred.

When I am absorbed in working with my hands, the child in me appears. The adult in me thinks about how to give it form. Then, looking at what I have made, I am happy again like a child. Going back and forth like this, I am still making things today.

There is one more source of this space: my memory of “warehouses.”

When I was little, I visited furniture shops and antique dealers with my parents. At the back of them were warehouses crammed with objects. I also cannot forget the warehouses where art lay sleeping, which I saw when I lived abroad. I could not yet see everything that was there, and that was irresistibly fascinating.

Stacked cardboard boxes. Something covered with cloth.
At a glance, you cannot tell what is inside.

But if you stop and peek into a single box, a whole world opens up. I wanted to create a place of such discoveries, and this exhibition space was born.

The time that has carried me from childhood to adulthood is still connected in this way. Using what I can do because I have grown up, I play like a child. That, too, is making that matters to me.

Please peek gently into the boxes.
I would be glad if my joy of making leads to your joy of discovering.

And may that moment also become a time to meet the child within you.