Hana Ikushima　生嶋花

After driving for a while along a winding mountain road in Tajimi City, Gifu Prefecture, the scenery suddenly opens up and a village comes into sight. An old Japanese-style house stands on a site of around six hundred square-meters in a corner of a basin surrounded by mountains. In 2020, woodworking artist Hana Ikushima set up her home and studio in this location together with her husband who is also a woodworking artist. The garage in front of the house is packed with wooden board supplies, woodworking machines for cutting and pressing them, and tools such as knives and planers, while the floor is covered in wood shavings. No sooner than setting foot into the space, the soft scent of wood was felt in the air. Ikushima had originally been interested in design and three-dimensional craftsmanship. Driven by a desire to “create things that affect the space,” she has aspired to pursue a career in woodworking since her days at university where she studied furniture making. Although she enjoyed designing furniture and was never short of ideas, she gradually began to be stifled by a production process where even an error as small as a mere tenth of a millimeter was considered unacceptable. The production of wooden vessels and art pieces that she commenced under such circumstances provided her with a high degree of freedom, liberating her from a world that demanded utmost precision.

From their soft forms reminiscent of clouds and hotdog buns, to the wood grains characterized by delicately fluid streamlines evoking the surface of water, the glossy and smooth texture like an egg shell that is inviting to touch ―Ikushima’s woodworks are conceived through the steady and painstaking process of carving and sanding roughly-cut wooden boards by hand. All of her creations permeate with an air of gentle softness. They are indeed a reflection of Ikushima herself, who is honest, good-natured, and makes those around her feel comfortable and at ease simply through her presence. The fluffy motifs that often make an appearance in her works are derived from the mountains. After graduating from university, Ikushima moved into the great wilderness surrounded by the Kiso Mountains upon entering woodwork training school. She spent a year waking up to the lively sounds of the river’s current and gazing at the vast and looming mountains. As the artist herself mentioned, for the first time she felt that she was truly grounded upon the earth. She developed a profound awareness for the earth’s protuberances, and found herself fascinated by the sheer beauty of the ridgelines and silhouettes of the mountains. This became the inspiration for her delicate mountain-shaped brooches that fit within the palm of one’s hand. While developing it into a variety of forms, the soft and generous curves characteristic of her work has ever since remained a core element of her artistic practice.

Currently, Ikushima is also a student studying ceramics. She had always been interested in ceramics since her university days, to the point where she was torn between choosing to study woodworking or ceramics. Despite entering the world of woodworking, her passion for ceramics had since continued to come and go. It was by chance that she came to live in Tajimi, which is a city known for its ceramics. There, she met many ceramic artists and people learning ceramics, resulting in her passion for ceramics to be rekindled. Ikushima states that woodworking and ceramics are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. While woodworking mainly involves acts of “subtraction” such as carving and sanding, ceramics centers on acts of “addition” such as assembling. Both are richly profound and interesting, including the challenges of things not going according to plan. As an artist, Ikushima explores these two conflicting paths while attempting to maintain a sense of balance. In terms of woodworking, she expresses her desire to someday collaborate with a craftsman to design and create her own furniture. Ikushima mentions that she simply wishes to do what feels right for her while traversing back and forth between woodworking and ceramics. Perhaps we will come to bear witness to the birth of an artist, who through fully mastering and merging two kinds of materials, creates highly unique, one-of-a-kind art pieces.