Posted on February 20, 2013

International Sculpture Center Blog
Publisher of Sculpture magazine

by Brooke Kamin Rapaport

In the deep wintertime – on the eve of a colossal snowstorm – you would not imagine half a dozen artists creating work based on nature in the middle of the Bronx. Yet six artists – Manuel Acevedo, Zachary Fabri, Asuka Hishiki, Maria Hupfield, Paloma McGregor and Linda Stillman – are facing the dormant winter landscape at Wave Hill, a twenty-eight-acre public garden and cultural center in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and initiating works inspired by their surroundings as part of a six week Winter Workshop Program.

— It is the stages of the progression of nature that have also influenced Asuka Hishiki. The watercolor painter conceived a three-dimensional collage of hundreds of vellum Pink-Tipped Satyr butterflies resting in a two-dimensional tree drawn in graphite for her Wave Hill residency. Butterfly Tree  measures 7 feet 5 inches x 3 feet 6 inches, and documents the painstaking recording of a butterfly’s movements.  Hishiki affixed each butterfly with specimen pins to the paper ground. If the viewer thinks that this work is in homage to a rabble of active butterflies, they may be incorrect.  Read more →