Region: Nova Scotia
Generation:
Born 1941, Tokyo Japan
Bio
Naoko Furue is a textiles artist who was born in Tokyo, Japan and immigrated to Canada in 1971. She graduated from Tama Fine Art University in Tokyo with a BFA in 1964 and from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan with an MFA in 1967. Since 1976 she has been an Associate Professor of Textiles at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University until her retirement in 2009. She is married with two daughters.
Furue has presented solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in US, Canada and Japan. Selected titles of the exhibitions are: Fabric in Space (Tokyo), The Language of Cloth: A Personal Inquiry (Halifax), Textiles, That is to say (Toronto) and Conceptual Textiles: Material meaning (U.S.A).
Artist Statement
During my study in the United States and subsequent residency in Canada, I was immersed in the idea of individuality, self-expression and textile as medium for self-expression. Strong emphasis placed on self/singularity had fresh appeal to me and at the same time rubbed against the way of more integrated approach experienced in Japan. Here in North America I was inspired to explore new cultural environment and the way of my making. Over the years, helped through the practice in the textile medium, I had come to understand the meaning of the individual self and its relation to the greater whole.
My making has been inspired and guided by materials and processes. My role in the process of making is to make visible the potential I perceive in them. The textile medium, with its cumulative and meditative form-making process and transformative fluidity offers me not only material goods but also provides an insight into human life and a path to wisdom.
