If ever an artist seemed totally out of place living here in the humid tropics it is this quiet but intense young woman. Kaori Ukaji first came to my notice while still a student at UH Hilo and participating in one of the local exhibitions. Her work was a long piece of butcher’s paper laboriously covered with layer upon layer of graphite pencil strokes. This was no simple dusting of black (or grey) upon white but a deep and intensely full-on coating that very nearly obliterated the paper upon which it was laid.
 

This singular effort was the opening public salvo for what has turned out to be a very amazing journey. The conceptual idea(l)s behind this sort of work have since morphed into a graceful trajectory - leaving in its wake an abundance of truly amazing images.
 

Having already matriculated from Musashi Bijutsu Daigaku (one of Japan’s better known art schools on the outskirts of Metropolitan Tokyo) Kaori came to the islands following her heart to study under the Zen teacher, Roshi. She articulated just why in a short monolog written to accompany the portrait she executed of him for the Schaeffer Portrait Challenge 2006. In her words: “I became his student not from an interest in Zen, but from an interest in Roshi himself. I believed I needed to be with him at that time in my life and that was true. Although I was with him little more than a year physically, he taught me the importance of being in this moment rather than in the past or the future. He gave me the opportunity to think about the truth and [both] the meaning and the meaninglessness of life.”
 

 

 

 
Roshi, Great Teacher


 

For myself and for many others – this singular portrait of her Zen master was an innervating but masterful departure from the starkness of her conceptual pieces. But it was undoubtedly still a defining part of that journey being composed from many segments emanating directly from those earlier single-minded graphite presentations. This work belongs in one of the state's public collections.

 

Not long afterwards I chanced to see an installation by Kaori at idspace. When told she was having a show there my mind leaped to imagine a piece that could hardly fit into this tiny gallery set as it is amidst a beautiful botanical garden. Again she turned the tables on her many admirers and produced a reflective environment that changed the nearly sterile interior at idspace to a contemplative retreat. Composed nearly entirely of wadded roll paper applied to every interior surface, all angular surfaces and corners were eliminated by her ruched wallpapering. A few low benches that neatly blended into the walls invited viewers to sit and contemplate her central graphite and paper objet. By excluding the garden from intruding on her carefully contrived arrangement, she created an equally delicious environment that spoke to the senses just as powerfully as did the lush garden outside.