Ayomi Yoshida
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Ayomi Yoshida (吉田 亜世美, Yoshida Ayomi; born 1958) is a Japanese artist, currently best known for her room-sized installations of woodchips that have been displayed in galleries and museums in Japan and the United States.[1] Between 1979 and 1997, prior to creating installations, her main medium was woodblock printing.
Ayomi's use of prints, blocks, and wood chips in her installations has expanded the field of woodblock printing.[2] As a member of a family of painters and print-makers,[2] she has broadened her family's already varied artistic tradition through her unconventional approach to the art of woodblock printing. Her parents, Hodaka Yoshida (1926–1995) and Chizuko Yoshida (born 1924), had also each expanded this tradition before her.
Ayomi belongs to the third generation of woman artists in her family, and is preceded by her mother, Chizuko, and her grandmother Fujio Yoshida (1887–1987). All three lived together for 20 years in her parents' home in a Tokyo suburb. A succession of women artists like this is a rare phenomenon in Japanese art history.
Education and Artistic Development
Neither of Ayomi's parents prompted her to become an artist. However, the process of making prints and the results were a part of her home-life and likely stimulated her own sensitivity to art. After studying art at Wakō University[1] in Tokyo, Japan, she began making silkscreen prints at Mendocino Art Center in California in 1979. She won her first award for a woodblock print in the Sunshine Print Grand Prix exhibit in 1980, and her first one-person show was in 1981, just one year after her grandmother's large solo retrospective in Tokyo. (At the time, her grandmother was 93 years old, while she was 23.) She is a member of the Japan Print Association and her work was featured on the cover of their 1999 exhibition catalogue. She has exhibited also in the College Women’s Association of Japan, the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and in other venues including international print biennials.