Fountain
Clay, soil, concrete, mortar, rebar
2022
96″W x 96″D x 68″H
Artist Statement
Fountain is a sculpture which consists of over 1000 bricks that Yumiko Ono produced by hand, using a very laborious press-mold process, during the residency at Franconia Sculpture Park. The bricks made out of clay, and the engobe she made with the soil from Franconia. She then used the method of pit fire for firing the bricks with local materials so that each brick has a unique surface from the chemical reaction of carbonized woods, plants and Franconia’s soil. Ono’s central theme of work is utopia and utopian architecture. Ono considers Japan, where she was born and raised, suspended between the East and the West. She has been researching on the architecture in Russia, Japan and the USA, including Minnesota, for this particular piece. Ono combines those architectural materials she collected to create fictive architecture. Her attempt is to create a space, which does not belong to anywhere. Ono’s major mediums in her work are porcelain and drawing. She uses those fragile and sensitive materials, which are contrary to the characteristics of architecture, for her architectural work in order to express the fragility and the fictionality of utopia itself. For this piece, Ono took a new approach to fit her work into the wild environment in Minnesota, by using press mold technique with clay and wooden molds, instead of her typical slip casting technique with slip (liquid porcelain) and plaster molds. As for the title, Fountain refers the work from Marcell Duchamp with the same title and also Ono incorporates the idea of Shakkei (borrowed scenery), which is the principle of incorporating background landscape into the composition of East Asian garden design, reflecting both Eastern and Western culture. As the sands and rocks in Japanese garden express rivers and seas, Ono anticipates the audience to perceive water from the piece.