Alumna kicks off year with solo exhibition in Japan

CCAD alumna Inka Essenhigh (CCAD 1991) has a busy exhibition schedule this year with her work traveling to Japan, Ohio, Maine, and Tennessee.

Her first solo exhibition of the year, The Natural and the Man-Made, is being shown at Tomio Koyama Gallery in Kyoto, Japan. The exhibition features five paintings that showcase a progression from nature to the man-made world. The first painting in the series, Late August, depicts trees and nature at their most mature states. The paintings progress until the last, Manhattan, which shows a spirit world infusing with the man-made world.

Tomio Koyama Gallery describes Essenhigh's paintings as presenting "a celestial and mystic sense of goddess in the natural world," including "ugliness and beauty, sophistication and naïveté, the calm eyes and skepticism, and the strength of utopist dreams and beliefs."

The Tomio Koyama Gallery exhibition is open until April 7, 2012.

Essenhigh, who lives and works in New York City, will show her work throughout 2012 in group exhibitions at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, OH, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, ME, and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, TN.